


Season 1, Episode 3: Killer Instinct

by Peaches and RAmen (Peachy00Keen)



Series: Star Trek: Babel [5]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek - Various Authors, Star Trek Online
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aliens, Andorians, Ethics, F/F, F/M, Gen, Gliesians, Humans, M/M, Multi, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Other, Science, Science Fiction, Star Trek References, Star Trek: Babel, Strux, Tellarites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 25,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23173732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peachy00Keen/pseuds/Peaches%20and%20RAmen
Summary: Babel and her crew encounter a series of strange system malfunctions while passing through a spatial anomaly. Finding a solution becomes a contentious race against time as the science teams attempt to gather enough information to stop what could become a grave mistake.
Series: Star Trek: Babel [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623328
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

_Captain’s Log, Stardate 48667.2: In the weeks since the Moraga incident, we’ve resumed our mission to explore the region of space near Strux territory, in order to continue our Starfleet mandate to seek out new life, while also seeking out answers to the questions raised six weeks ago when a Strux vessel deliberately contaminated a Federation Starbase and attacked a shuttle carrying Lieutenant Commander O’Malley and Ensign Brahms. In the time since the first attack, we have not been able to make contact with any Strux vessel, nor have we been able to reliably track one down. As there has been no official contact between our two peoples, we have no way to contact them directly, and so we must either find one of their ships out here, or risk traveling deep within their territory, putting_ Babel _and her crew in danger. I am not yet convinced that the mystery surrounding their aggression is worth such a risk, and until that changes, we will continue to follow our original mission._

 _For most of the crew, things are running smoothly, but I have found myself personally struggling with the recent news of the destruction of the_ Enterprise _over Veridian III just days ago. While I never served aboard the NCC 1701-D, I spent a decade serving aboard her predecessor, and as a former_ Enterprise _commanding officer once told me, once you’ve served aboard that vessel, you’re always connected with the ships that bear its name, and the crews that served aboard them. Thankfully, it seems that the crew survived the mission, even if the ship did not, and there will no doubt be another vessel to carry the Federation’s standard into the next generation of Starfleet._

Raj’s communicator chirped at him, and he ended the recording to answer. “Murali here, what is it?”

 _“Captain, we believe we’ve found a Strux vessel close to our position,”_ came the report from Commander O’Malley. _“It’s sending out a distress call.”_

Raj was out of his ready room and onto the bridge immediately at the mention of the Strux. “A distress call?”

“Yes sir,” said the blond man at the Ops station. “They don’t say what’s wrong, only that they are in danger and need immediate assistance.”

“How soon can we be there?”

The man at Ops looked over to Ensign Brahms at the conn. Brahms entered the coordinates and looked back at the captain. “We can be there in four hours, sir.”

“Good, make it so.” Raj took his seat in the center of the bridge and looked over at his First Officer. “Your thoughts?”

“It might be a trap,” the red-haired woman said. “They’ve attacked us before.”

“That they have,” he replied. “And you’re right, it may well be a trap. I want our shields up and the ship on yellow alert when we arrive. Still, if this isn’t a trap, we have a duty to offer our aid. And if it is a trap, it’s still an opportunity to come face to face with the people we’ve been searching for.”


	2. Chapter 2

Koltak leaned against the wall of the small study off to one side of the biology lab. Next to them was a set of displays and a couple of neurocortical monitors. They casually flipped through the remaining pages of a study on human cognitive responses to emotional stimuli on their PADD as they waited for their second test subject to arrive. A few sentences shy of the end of the discussion section, a woman with dark curly hair poked her head in the door of the study.

“Hey,” Renetta said with a friendly smile, “sorry to keep you waiting. I was watching a dissertation on stabilizing isolated warp bubbles and the professor took longer than expected to wrap up”

They set down their PADD on the table in front of the wall-mounted readouts and looked down at the small woman as she closed the door gently behind her. “That’s alright. I was doing some research of my own. You’re just in time.” Koltak gestured toward the chairs near their setup. “This experiment shouldn’t take long.”

Renetta walked over and pulled out a chair, turning it to face Koltak before taking a seat. “So, what is it we’re doing here today anyway? You mentioned something about brain activity and filling in Starfleet records.”

The tall technicolor alien picked up a neuro monitor off the table and placed it on their head before picking up the second one and bringing it over to Renetta. The crouched down in front of her and gently turned her head to the side, pulling her hair out of the way to place the monitor on her head. “Starfleet has incomplete records on Gliesian biology,” they explained, standing up again and walking back toward the computers. “However, while I know what is normal for me, I don’t know how it varies from the human standard.”

“Which is why I’m here.”

“Correct.” Koltak input a few commands and their monitors both beeped and the screens sprang to life with myriad lines, numbers, and charts. “The Doctor mentioned that, during the incident at Starbase 214, my readings were basically useless to her. I am certain she will appreciate having a point of reference in the future.”

“Probably. Doctor Dupont has a lot to keep track of as it is. It’s nice of you to do this for her.”

Koltak shrugged. “Someday, I hope that my people will join the Federation. When they do, there will already be data on file waiting for them.” They turned around and took a seat next to Renetta, opting to sit atop the table instead of in one of the chairs, which were comically small for someone their size. “If nothing else, I hope that the updated and fleshed-out files will… clear up some misconceptions.”

Renetta tore her eyes away from the dancing lines on the screens and looked at Koltak. “What kind of misconceptions?”

“Biological, cultural, any kind. Starfleet doesn’t have much information on Gliesians beyond the fact that we exist, see one hundred times the average number of colors that a human can, and that our blood is a combination of hemocyanin and hemoglobin, making it purple.” They hesitated for a moment before continuing. “There is also a note in the original file that states our hierarchical structure, while militaristic, shows no apparent favoritism toward one sex or another.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Technically nothing, but Gliesian anatomy is not... dimorphic.”

“That’s okay. Neither is Andorian anatomy. It’s… quadrumorphic?” Renetta shook her head. “I don’t even know if that’s a word.”

“It’s not important,” Koltak asserted quickly, though not impolitely, as their brainwave patterns went haywire along the beta wave axis. “We should continue with the experiment. You will serve as my human standard by which I will gauge my variations from the ‘norm.’”

She shook her head again. “Why me? What made me the best candidate for your study?”

“Well,” Koltak hesitated. There wasn’t anything about the small woman that made her an exemplary average for statistical purposed, but it had been a direct question, and lying rarely did anyone any good. “You are small and non-threatening.”

“Uh, thanks?”

“It made you seem approachable, so I asked you to be my test subject.”

“Koltak, you’re several heads taller than anyone else on board. What about the other crewmembers could be intimidating to you?”

They fidgeted with their fingers as, once again, they hesitated to answer. “I believe it to be more a matter of personality. You are approachable.”

Renetta sighed. “If you say so. I’m just glad I could help, I guess.” She shifted in her chair and stared at the readouts again. “So, what exactly am I doing here, anyway? What are we doing here, I mean?”

“My objective is to measure both of our brainwave patterns in response to directed emotional stimuli. For the most part, this should be little more than a thought exercise. I’ll ask you to think of people or events that elicit certain emotions, and then the computer will log the data for me to review later on.”

“That sounds easy enough. What’s first?”

“First, we both will have to clear our minds and engage in a period of meditation for a few minutes to gather a baseline.”

“Koltak,” she said, trying not to laugh. “You’re talking to one of the worst people onboard when it comes to calmly clearing minds.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If you saw my holodeck routine you would,” she let out a tiny snicker. “I exercise to calm down. Getting my heart rate up takes away my stress.”

“Is there anything you do to relax that you could simulate with mental images?”

She thought for a moment. “Yeah, I think I can manage that.”

“Then let’s begin. Do your best to maintain that calmness until I give you a new prompt.”

The room fell silent for several minutes after that, interrupted only by the beeping of monitors as they tracked brain activity in the two officers. Koltak pulled their legs up onto the table and sat with them folded before them in a traditional meditative stance. Renetta sat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes closed, a faint smile on her face. A short while later, Koltak spoke up, the sound of their voice making Renetta jump.

“Alright, remember that feeling, as we will go back to it between emotions. First, I want you to think of something that makes you happy.”

Renetta nodded and the room fell silent again as the lines on the readout shifted. Five minutes later, they emerged and went back to a meditative state. In turn, they cycled through sadness, fear, excitement, and anger. Second-to-last in Koltak’s lineup, they asked Renetta to think of something to do with love.

As their five-minute session began, Koltak found themself struggling to latch onto a memory of love. Even with their eyes closed, bringing an image to mind was nearly impossible. Finally, they thought of Professor Brown at Starfleet, who had shown them kindness when all other students left for the holidays. The professor had offered to let Koltak come home with her to spend time with her family, who lived nearby. She had two small children, ages five and seven, who were afraid of Koltak at first, but who ultimately came to love their unusual guest so much that when it came time to go back to school, the younger one cried. Koltak smiled at the memory.

When they opened their eyes to look at Renetta, they noticed that her eyes were squeezed shut and her face was bright red. They glanced at her chart and noticed at least triple the activity that Koltak had just shown.

“You have changed colors,” they stated plainly.

Renetta opened her eyes with a horrified gasp. “What? That’s crazy.”

“You are more shades of pink and red than I’ve ever seen on a human.”

The young woman sucked in her bottom lip and chewed on it hard. “Huh, that’s funny. I can’t imagine why that would be the case. Maybe I’m just hot? This is a pretty small room. That’s probably it.”

“Embarrassment is a useful emotion, but I don’t have a suitable analog to compare it to for myself.”

“That’s a lie, Mister ‘Small And Non-Threatening,’” she hesitated. “Miss ‘Small And…” Renetta gave Koltak a troubled look. “This is probably going to sound incredibly rude, but I don’t-”

“Officer.”

“What?”

“Just ‘officer’ is fine.”

“Oh,” she said sheepishly. “Okay. Well, my point stands. It sounds like you have at least a little bit of social anxiety, which is close enough to embarrassment, in my experience.”

“I’ll take note of that.” They stood up and retrieved a pair of colorful blocks from the table. Handing one to Renetta, they said, “for the last measurement, I need to see both of our brains in the process of problem-solving. I asked the computer to replicate a couple of simple Earth logic puzzles. The objective of these is to make the sides all one hue.”

“They’re all jumbled,” she said, turning the block over in her hands.

“There are joints within the cube that allow you to rotate it along several axes. Just focus on aligning the faces. Even if you don’t finish, I just need five minutes of problem-solving data and then you may leave.”

“No, I’m determined to get this. Whenever you’re ready.”

Five minutes passed in relative silence. Beeping monitors and clicking puzzles occupied the auditory plane. At the end of the time, Koltak had managed to align three of the sides, and Renetta had completed two and a half.

“That is all I needed. Thank you for your time,” they said, standing up from where they sat on the table.

“Can I keep this thing?” Renetta asked, holding up the block.

“I suppose so. I have no need for a second one.”

“Thanks!” She pushed the chair back in where she’d found it, removed the neuro monitor, and headed for the door. She stopped just in front of it and turned back. “Hey, we should talk more. You seem like an interesting person. Maybe we can get lunch together or something, now that I’m not following a rigid bridge schedule anymore.”

Koltak looked up from the readouts in surprise. “Oh. Um, that would be nice.” It took every ounce of concentration not to continue stammering. “Thank you.”

Renetta beamed. “You’re welcome, and there’s your embarrassment reading.” The small woman waved and headed out the door to the laboratory proper. As the doors closed behind her, Koltak felt the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of their mouth.


	3. Chapter 3

_Babel_ dropped out of warp one hundred kilometers from the origin point of the distress call. Raj leaned forward in his chair as the viewscreen showed the empty starfield ahead of them, the nearest star far off to the ship’s port side. 

“Status report?” he asked to the bridge at large. 

“ _Babel_ is running at yellow alert, shields are up and weapons are on standby,” Lieutenant Barnes called from behind him at tactical. “I don’t see any active ships in sensor range.”

“Hold on, I’m picking up something on sensors, sir,” Lieutenant Caldwell called out from the science station behind Barnes. 

“What is it? A ship?”

There was an agonizing pause as Raj waited for an update. “The composition is a pretty good match for what little we know of Strux vessels, but I’m not picking up any power or life signs.”

“Curious,” Raj said, scratching at his beard in contemplation. “Ensign, take us in for a closer look.”

Ensign Brahms entered the new coordinates, and the ship lurched forward toward the floating debris. As they approached, the viewscreen locked onto the wreckage and zoomed in, showing the dead hulk of a claw-shaped starship, roughly a third the size of a Nebula-class starship like _Babel_. The starboard side of the vessel was covered in strange scorch marks, but no other significant damage could be seen, at least from a visual. 

“Mister Caldwell, what can you tell us about that ship?” Raj asked, his mind already racing with the possibilities. An opportunity to board and investigate a Strux vessel would be a source of invaluable information for both the crew of the _Babel_ and the Federation at large. 

“It’s hard to say, Captain. There’s clearly damage from some sort of energy output on the outer hull, but how that shut down everything on the ship and killed the entire crew is a mystery. We don’t know for sure that the damage we see _is_ what caused the death of the crew. For all we know, they were picked up by another ship, or escaped in a shuttle or escape pods. There’s no sign of what caused the problem either, so it could have been anything from an attack by another ship to some sort of internal malfunction.”

“Is there a breathable atmosphere?”

“No sir, it looks like they lost life support around the time they sent the distress signal, and there was some internal chemical leak. The ship is still pressurized, and it looks like their gravity plating is still functioning, but we’d need to send an away team in hazard suits.”

Raj tapped his combadge. “Bridge to Lieutenant Naazt.”

_“Naazt here. What is it?”_

“Chief, we’ve found a derelict Strux vessel, but we don’t know what happened to it. I’d like you to assemble an away team to find out. You’ll need hazard suits for the job, and you’ll have whatever other resources you think you’ll need.”

_“Understood Captain. We’ll be ready in an hour. Naazt out.”_

Raj looked over at his First Officer. “Well Commander, it looks like we have another mystery on our hands.”


	4. Chapter 4

Alone in the study, Koltak began reviewing their data from the session. The variations in the brainwave patterns followed a noticeable trend. Compared to Renetta’s readings, Koltak’s results showed a more pervasive pattern of alpha waves. During problem-solving, their gamma waves were incredibly active while Renetta’s were nearly nonexistent.

 _Perhaps the gamma wave generation was what led the Doctor astray during the crisis,_ they thought as they brought up some human sleep studies from the Starfleet database. For the past week, Koltak had been sleeping with a neuro monitor attached to gather a spread of data on their brain’s resting state. While neuroscience wasn’t their area of expertise, reading charts wasn’t a terribly difficult task as long as you understood the axes you were looking at.

Koltak began setting up an overlay to run sleep scans in parallel on their display when one of the neurocortical monitors on the table beside them beeped as if it had just been hooked up to a patient. They turned in their chair and picked the small device up. Its indicator light was on. The Gliesian turned it off and set it back down on the table before turning their attention back to the data on their screen.

A few minutes later, as they were running their analysis, the other neuro monitor blinked on and chirped its connection announcement. They paused the playback on their program and turned to look at the devices on the table. As they reached for the one that had just turned on, the other one blinked back to life.

Lines of befuddlement appeared on their colorful forehead as they picked up both devices and turned them over in their hands. “I don’t understand. These should only turn on in the presence of bioelectric impulses.”

The display they had been using to gather the data during the original test suddenly flashed on. It had been off for at least a half-hour, and nothing had been connected since the neuro monitors during the test. Koltak watched as the program began displaying data as if it were tracking brain activity. The lines were a garbled mess. Theta and beta waves appeared in tandem, spiking and subsiding at random. Gamma waves surged and fell. The towering technicolor alien stared at the screen, fascinated.

Then, the lines went silent. All activity ceased. They looked down at the neuro monitors in their hand. The lights were still on, indicating that they were still “hooked up,” though there was no apparent connection source. Gently, they set the devices back on the table and walked back to the sleep study data open on the secondary display screen. No sooner had they sat back down and resumed playback did the live readout begin scrawling lines across the charts again.

They stopped their analysis once again and leaned back in their chair, folding their arms across their chest and stretched out their legs, taking up at least a quarter of the room’s depth. The lines on the monitor appeared as hectic as they had before, but as Koltak watched, they began to follow a familiar pattern. Whatever was causing the interference was _thinking_. Koltak observed from where they sat, taking steady, deep breaths and maintaining an ongoing mental record of what they were seeing. The data would be automatically saved for later review, but as it was happening, there were more opportunities to find answers than there ever would be later.

_The room is silent and empty except for me. No other electronic devices appear to be affected. Both neuro monitors are active and reading the same inputs. It has been at least half an hour since I last touched any of those devices. So, why are they on, and what are they picking up?_

As suddenly as it had begun, the readout stopped and, this time, the neuro monitors disconnected.

_Interesting._


	5. Chapter 5

“Are you ready, Lieutenant?” the transporter chief asked. Naazt checked the seals on his hazard suit one final time before checking the status of the rest of his team. Johnson and Thriss nodded back to him, indicating that their suits were functioning properly and their gear was ready.

“We’re ready. Energize.”

The familiar blue transporter field blurred his vision, and just as soon as it began, it dissipated, leaving him in a dark hallway aboard the Strux vessel. The gravity plating, designed to work passively from its existing charge even when not powered, was still functioning, but the lighting and other basic systems were all nonfunctional, leaving only the glow from the readout on his and the others’ suits to light the area around them. Naazt switched on the power to his headlamp and the others did the same, casting narrow white beams of light down the hallway.

“Well Chief,” Thriss began, shining light all around them as she swept the room with her eyes. “Where do you want us to start?”

“Where else would we start, Ensign? We head for Main Engineering. Once we figure out where it is, of course.”

The trio walked carefully through the maze of hallways, Johnson diligently scanning everything they passed with his tricorder. They’d been walking for only a few minutes when they found the first body. Thriss let out a shriek as she rounded a corner ahead of the others, sending Naazt and Johnson rushing forward.

“Ensign! What is it?” The Tellarite chief engineer asked as he reached her first. As he rounded the corner, he saw the source of her fear and ground his teeth. The corpse was propped up against the wall, frozen in the moment of its death. The [ Strux](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/8b/a8/af/8ba8af4c2e10836e49cbef97977b0636.jpg) in question was clutching at its throat, eyes bulged. 

“I... I’m sorry, sir,” Thriss stammered. “I just wasn’t expecting that.”

“Where did you think the crew went, exactly?” Johnson asked incredulously. 

The young Andorian woman didn’t answer. Instead, she looked pointedly away from the body and the Human junior lieutenant questioning her. Naazt stepped between them and ran a tricorder scan on the body.

“That’s enough, you two,” he said irritably. “We’ll likely find more bodies as we get closer to the critical ship systems, so be prepared to deal with them. From the layout of the ship, we should be able to access the ship’s power grid from the next room. Now let’s get moving.”

They found another body outside the main engineering control room, and three more inside. 

“They died at their posts,” Johnson observed with a note of respect.

“They still died,” Naazt snorted, moving one body aside to inspect the unpowered console. “This power grid isn’t too different from our own EPS grid, though I don’t see controls for any redundant systems.” Pulling a power pack from his toolkit, he removed a panel and started pulling out various connectors until he found one he could make work. Lights flickered on in the room, and Naazt stood up to admire his handiwork.

“There, that ought to do it. Alright, people, we have about five minutes of power, so long as we don’t try to use anything other than the computer systems. Spread out and start pulling data from anywhere you can. I don’t care what it is, and I don’t want us wasting time trying to learn anything while we’re on the clock. We’ll review all of it when we’re done here. Any questions?”

Johnson and Thriss both shook their heads and split up, searching for any panel they could open or console they could connect to with the series of universal adapters Starfleet’s Corps of Engineers had developed for exactly this type of mission. The lights flickered every few seconds, and seemingly as quickly as they began, the ship lost power, and they were back to where they started. Naazt looked down at his oxygen level. _Still plenty of time._

“Good work, team. Now, let’s start looking through what we have.” 

Most of the data they’d collected was standard engineering data: Power flow readings, warp field statistics for the last few weeks, records of documented glitches and problems to be fixed, and other common diagnostic information, all of which would be useful in the long run for learning more about the Strux and their technology, but wasn’t particularly exciting or useful for their current mystery. 

“I never thought I’d find something duller than writing diagnostic logs,” Thriss muttered as she reviewed the data. “But _reading_ diagnostic logs for a ship I don’t even know... that’s somehow even worse.”

Naazt walked over to see what she was reading. “You’re looking in the wrong place, Ensign. Don’t try to make sense of a few hundred hours of data. Look for the anomalies, and look for where the crew reacts or doesn’t react to the anomalies. Like here, for instance,” he said, pointing at a power relay maintenance log. “What does that tell you?”

She looked up at him, confusion evident even through the semi-opaque visor of her helmet. “I don’t understand, Chief.”

“Of course you don’t!” he exclaimed. “That’s why I’m teaching you. Look at that blip there. The power spikes every four-point-three hours, and offloads energy to _this_ relay. What would you say is happening?”

“It could be an overload?” It was more of a question than a statement, but he waited for her to continue anyway. “The excess energy is being routed somewhere safe so it doesn’t damage the ship.”

Naazt nodded. “Good, you’ve almost got it. But if it’s a regularly occurring problem, why isn’t there a work log for fixing it, or a plan in place to fix it?”

“Because... because they don’t want to fix it!” She pulled up an attached schematic, and she let out a cry of victory when she found what she was looking for. “Right here! Every four-point-three hours, the excess energy is routed to this unused cell. They don’t have a redundant EPS grid like we do, but they can get emergency power by utilizing the overflow energy. It’s less efficient, but could save them if they lose power.” She looked up at Naazt, suddenly disheartened. “I guess it didn’t help them this time, did it?”

“No, I suppose it didn’t, but it tells us something important. Whatever took out the ship’s power took out everything for a sustained duration. It wasn’t a one-time surge.”

“Chief!” Johnson yelled from across the room. “I found something over here!” 

Naazt and Thriss followed the lieutenant to another large console, where Johnson was going through more data on his PADD. On it was a series of disruptor specifications, something the captain would certainly want documented for future encounters, as well as the most recent system logs for the disruptor cannons, which showed a series of discharges shortly before the ship lost all power.

“It seems they went down fighting,” Naazt said as he set down the PADD. 

“Yes,” Thriss said. “But fighting what?”


	6. Chapter 6

Renetta looked up from the PADD on her desk, her hair pushed messily to one side from leaning her head on her palm as she read. She turned around and called over her shoulder to one of her nearby peers who was analyzing the spectral data from a recent supernova. “Hey, Milo, do you have a second?”

A messy orange tangle of hair bobbed as Milo’s head pulled slowly back from the display he’d been staring at and his head turned quickly to look over at his colleague. “That’s me! What’s up?”

“That dissertation I was watching earlier on warp theory has me thinking and I was wondering if I could bounce some ideas off of you -- totally hypothetical stuff, but I want to know just how crazy I sound before I throw it at the computer.”

“Alright, half of it will probably go over my head, but go ahead,” he pushed off from his desk and wheeled across the room, grabbing onto the corner of her workspace to bring himself to a halt, “hit me with what you’ve got.”

“Okay, so you know how Federation ships are limited in their travel speed by the exponentially-increasing amounts of energy required to achieve faster warp levels?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you know how we relay signals via subspace channels using subspace submersion, right?”

“I don’t know much about how exactly it works, but I know it’s something we do, yeah.”

“According to known theories using subspace submersion, the required energy output to travel while completely submerged within subspace is significantly lower than those needed to travel via warp bubble. So, what if we just follow the lead of our communications signals and tunnel through subspace for a while and pop back up somewhere else? Traveling directly through subspace would allow us to potentially move faster for longer periods of time. It’d make everything from standard travel to emergency response so much more efficient.”

Milo took a moment to consider her proposal before he shook his head. “You’d still need to overcome the energy thresholds needed to pass into different levels of subspace, and from what I understand, those are still fairly substantial. Plus, there’s the element of continuum drag that you’d need to account for. It slows down our subspace communication signals enough that they pop back out of the continuum every so often. I feel like we’d run into pretty similar issues if we tried to fly straight through subspace.

“Maybe, but what if there was a way to push past that and keep the drag from dropping us out of warp.”

“Wouldn’t that put a lot of strain on the engines?”

“Maybe, but it shouldn’t be as much as if we were to try the same thing within a warp field. Less drag, less energy, less strain on the engines.”

“Even if we could ‘submerge’ the ship and fly it along subspace channels like an energy transmission, the ship has mass that you’re not accounting for. That’s got to cause some kind of discrepancy.”

“But what if we were able to compensate for it?” Renetta turned back to her desk and switched on her display. “Computer, calculate the energy required for a ship like _Babel_ to reach warp nine if it was traveling while submerged in subspace.”

_“There is insufficient data to calculate an answer.”_

“Okay, extrapolate to the best of your abilities then. Based on the mass of this ship and the known energy requirements for submerging signals into subspace, what’s the best estimate you can give me?”

_“Calculations can be made to eighty-six percent confidence.”_

“Wow, that’s pretty abysmal,” Milo snorted.

“Give her a break. It’s a lot of guesswork. Computer, run calculations.”

The computer chirped and began to list a series of rapid-fire calculations on the screen before the two scientists. After roughly three pages of scrolling lines of equations, the computer abruptly stopped. Renetta waited for an answer, but none came. “Computer, what happened?”

The system gave a dissenting chirp before powering down the display.

“I think you broke it.”

Renetta shook her head and poked the power button. “I’ve never seen it do that before.” The screen turned back on and displayed her desktop of the old Starfleet science insignia. “Wow, it completely shut off. Computer,” it chirped in affirmative response, “run last requested calculation.”

The system gave another dissenting blip. _“There are no recent calculation requests on file for this station.”_

“You’ve got to be joking!" Renetta exclaimed as she rocked back in her chair, throwing her arms up in the air. "Computer, run a calculation to--"

_"Request not recognized."_

Renetta looked to Milo in exasperated confusion. "I don't get it."

"Apparently, neither does the computer."

She threw an elbow at him playfully. "Seriously, what's going on with the ship's computer?" The young warp theorist turned and looked around the room for anyone else working on an integrated interface. A young woman on the other end of the lab appeared to be grimacing at the display embedded in the wall. "Keera, are you having trouble with the computer, too?" The other woman turned her head and nodded enthusiastically, and Renetta turned her attention back to Milo. "I wonder if it's just us."


	7. Chapter 7

"The away team is back on board, Captain," Lieutenant Barnes reported from the tactical station. 

"Very good," Raj replied, rising from his chair. "Let Mister Naazt know that I'll meet him in Main Engineering shortly. Commander O'Malley, you have the bridge."

As he started to walk to the turbolift, he noticed a series of alerts blinking on Lieutenant Caldwell's console, just moments before the man turned to face him.

"Sir, I'm picking up some strange subspace distortions all around us. I've never seen anything like this before, it's like some sort of energy cloud."

Raj stopped, both intrigued and concerned. Cataloging and investigating spatial anomalies was at the heart of Starfleet's mandate of exploration, but finding his ship and crew unexpectedly at the center of an unknown phenomenon while still solving the mystery of a dead ship was not exactly a comfortable position. 

"Are our shields holding?" he asked, focused primarily on the safety of _Babel._

"Yes sir," Jessica answered. "Whatever this thing is, it doesn't appear to be harming us."

“Let’s keep it that way then. Maintain yellow alert, and notify me if anything changes. Mister Caldwell, I want that field scanned with every sensor pallet we have onboard, and a Class Four probe deployed.”

“Aye, sir,” Barnes and Caldwell replied, and Raj shared a nod with Commander O’Malley before he departed for Main Engineering.


	8. Chapter 8

The halls were relatively empty during the walk through Deck Twenty-Four, giving Raj plenty of time to ponder the two mysteries facing _Babel_ and her crew. The Strux vessel was, of course, his primary concern. Their unprovoked attack on a Federation starbase and subsequent attack on Commander O'Malley's shuttlecraft had been repelled, but not without casualties, and the offending party had escaped before _Babel_ could apprehend them. If the Federation was going to extend its influence to this region of space, they had to get to the bottom of this and find a way to neutralize the threat posed by this strange new adversary. Diplomacy was the preferred option, of course, but if they left him with no other option, Raj was certainly no stranger to fighting. 

As if the derelict ship wasn't enough of a mystery, they were now seemingly engulfed in some form of spatial anomaly. No matter how much he wanted to focus on the Strux, he wouldn't feel comfortable again until he had some answers about the strange cloud of energy waiting just outside their shields, regardless of how safe Lieutenant Barnes assured him they were.

The door opened as he approached Main Engineering, and Raj stepped through into a bustling scene as engineers moved about the room, monitoring readings from the new anomaly as well as continuing the heavy workload that was maintaining a starship of _Babel_ ’s size this far from known Federation space. In the center of it all, freshly out of his hazard suit, was Lieutenant Naazt, barking orders to his crew through his thick, bushy beard. 

“Ah, you’re here,” he said to Raj as the captain made his way to the large display table in the center of Main Engineering. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming. What’s this about a spatial anomaly?”

“You’re about as up-to-date as I am, Lieutenant,” Raj replied. “It’s an energy cloud, though if we know much more than that, it’s new information since I left the bridge. We have a probe out and are scanning the cloud as we speak, so hopefully, by the time you’ve finished telling me about your away mission, somebody will know what’s going on outside.”

The Tellarite grumbled to himself, then started working the controls on the center display. “I suppose I’d better show you the most interesting bits of what we found, then. Sit down, this might take a while.”


	9. Chapter 9

Koltak stared fixedly at the readout, waiting for something, _anything_ to happen again. They jumped when the door of the study suddenly shushed open.

“Hey, are you having trouble with the computer?” Renetta asked, her tone a mix of exasperation and excitement.

“You know, you could have chimed first,” the Gliesian responded flatly as their heart rate returned to normal. “To answer your question: Yes, I am. The neuro monitors have been picking up anomalous readings, but whatever was causing them appears to have stopped,” they responded, turning back to the flatlined graphs.

“Huh, so the computer isn’t the only thing going haywire,” Renetta thought aloud, scratching her head. “I wonder if anyone else is having trouble.”

“Have you considered the possibility that it was just an electrical surge?”

“I have,” Renetta asserted, sounding slightly put-off by the suggestion, “but that doesn’t answer why it happened or how widespread the problem is.”

“If it has already passed, is it worth our time to pursue it?”

The small woman folded her arms indignantly over her chest. “Computer, calculate the time it would take for a transmission to travel seven parsecs through subspace.”

Two seconds of silence was followed by a dissenting beep. _“Unable to process request.”_

“Is that what you’ve been asking it to do?” Koltak inquired somewhat skeptically.

“More or less. Why?”

“Perhaps you could try something less obscure.”

Renetta gestured, visibly annoyed at this point. “Be my guest.”

“Computer, estimate the travel time to Gliese from our current location.”

Once again, the ship’s computer gave a dissenting chirp before declaring its inability to process the request.

Renetta gave the tall officer a knowing look. “Are you satisfied that it’s a problem now?”

“Yes, though it seems more like a problem for engineering than a--” The tiny woman took Koltak by the arm and marched out of the room. “Where are we going?”

“To talk to the other departments.”

“Why? This seems like an issue outside of our jurisdiction.”

“Because I want answers.”

“As do I, but,” Koltak protested as the main doors leading out into the atrium swished open. “I am unsure what you think we’ll be able to accomplish by interrogating members of the science team.”

“We’re gathering data.”

“And why am I being dragged along on this misadventure?”

“Because you’re a witness.”

“This is beginning to feel like a criminal investigation.”

“What if it is?” the small woman shot back tauntingly.

“I feel like you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself here. All we’ve experienced--”

The two officers stormed through the doors of the Planetary Science labs and Renetta hollered unceremoniously to whoever would listen. “Hey, have the computers been--!” The last sound to leave her mouth was a muffled noise of indignation as Koltak clapped a hand over her mouth.

“You don’t need to shout,” they said with a note of irritation to Renetta before addressing the very startled crew members who were now staring at the odd couple. “What my colleague so boisterously wished to ask was whether or not you have been experiencing trouble with the ship’s computer and other satellite systems.”

There was a long pause before someone finally answered. “Uh, yeah, actually.” Koltak turned to see a rather tall human male standing up at one of the back tables. “I was running a series of terraforming simulations on Class H planets while I was on the bridge. I swung by to check on their progress and my screen went blue.” He waved a PADD at them, showing off the cerulean screen with small white text. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to salvage my data, but I’m beginning to think it’s a lost cause.”

“Curious,” Koltak said, taking the PADD from the man and examining the text.

“Hi, Jeremy,” Renetta chirped, “how are things on the bridge?”

“Starchy as ever. It’s an honor to be up there, but I definitely prefer my little corner here in the science labs. Command gives me a headache.”

“I mean, from what I’ve heard, you’re not too bad in command.”

Lieutenant Caldwell furrowed his brows. “Who told you that?”

“Commander O’Malley,” Renetta returned, matter-of-factly. “She said that you did an ‘exemplary job during the events that transpired on Moraga.’”

Koltak interjected, sparing Jeremy the need to put his conflicted opinions into words. “If I may,” they said, handing back the PADD.

“Hey, you got my data back!” The look on his face expressed gratitude and relief beyond the mere retrieval of his simulations.

“Yes, and the cause of the failure appears to have been from some sort of external signal.”

He looked up at the Gliesian, suddenly very curious. “How did you determine that?”

The Gliesian shrugged. “Error reports. I imagine you would find answers to most of your technical mishaps if you read them.”

“That seems kind of obvious in retrospect,” Renetta ceded.

“Indeed.”

“Did you get one from your computer, Koltak?”

They shook their head. “No. There was nothing objectively wrong. The equipment picked up anomalous readings. That was the extent of my encounter.”

Jeremy opened the error logs on his PADD and skimmed them briefly before looking back to Koltak and Renetta “Is there any way we could access error reports from across the ship during a specific timeframe?”

“With all due respect, Lieutenant, depending on the scale of the problem, that could take a _very_ long time.”

“Yeah, but it would give us a sense of scale if nothing else, right?” Renetta offered.

“True,” Koltak considered the possibility, “but I don’t believe any of us have that kind of clearance.”

Renetta watched as Jeremy closed the error report and resumed reviewing the progress of his simulations momentarily. “Who would?” she asked.

“Engineering,” the Lieutenant offered succinctly, looking up from his work.

“Sure, but you’ve got another thing coming if you think I’m about to call up _Babel_ ’s Chief Engineer,” Renetta scoffed. “Lieutenant Naazt hates being bothered.”

“He’s a Tellarite. If it’s not something directly related to what he’s doing, it’s an inconvenience. Whatever is going on seems like it would be well within his realm of expertise.” Jeremy shrugged, “he might not like receiving the call, but if there’s anyone who can help us get to the bottom of this, it’s Naazt.”

One of the other scientists swore as their screen flashed azure. Koltak watched as several other screens turned similar hues as a wave of errors seemed to wash over the room. The PADD in Jeremy’s hand also changed colors, and Koltak cleared their throat. “Lieutenant,” they gestured at the device.

Jeremy turned it toward him and groaned. “Not again.”

The lights in the room dimmed for a few seconds before returning to their default brightness.

“That doesn’t seem right,” Renetta proffered unhelpfully. The tall alien regarded the small woman with an unamused look. “What? Do you disagree?” They didn’t entertain her with an answer.

Jeremy tapped his combadge. “Science to Engineering, we’re experiencing some strange power fluctuations and widespread computer errors over here. Any idea what’s going on?”


	10. Chapter 10

The lights flickered in Main Engineering, and Naazt let out a steady stream of profanities in three different Federation languages as he moved from the console he’d just fixed to another one. Sure enough, the EPS flow had been completely rerouted across five decks, with no apparent pattern or reason. 

“Chief,” Thriss called to him from across the room. “The science labs are asking us what’s going on, and we’re getting several complaints from the holosuites.”

“Well, tell them to get in line! The EPS malfunction is hitting everything from Deck Twenty-One to Twenty-Five, and the last time I checked, some crewman’s holo-fantasy didn’t take precedence over the structural integrity field or the warp core. I’m sure he can keep it in his pants a little longer.”

A polite cough from behind him reminded Naazt that Captain Murali was still present, and Naazt let out a sigh.

“Just tell them that we’re working the problem, and will have everything restored as soon as possible.”

“Chief, I think I found something!”

Naazt turned at the sound of Johnson’s voice and moved quickly to the console the man was working on. 

“What do you have, Lieutenant?”

Johnson pointed at a series of energy spikes each of the two screens he was using. “Here on the left are the readings from the EPS surge buffer. These spikes are way more than we would ever expect from an internal malfunction, and each one corresponds to one of the system-wide glitches we’ve seen happening. On the right, we have energy output from the spatial anomaly _Babel_ just encountered, spread across several different bands.”

“Did we show any signs of an issue before the anomaly appeared?”

“No, Chief.”

Naazt looked at the captain for input, and Raj tapped his combadge.

“Murali to bridge, have you done anything to or with the anomaly since I left?”

 _“No sir,”_ came the voice of Commander O’Malley. _“We just started to receive telemetry from the probe, though there’s significant interference.”_

“Can we increase our distance from the anomaly?”

_“It’s completely surrounding us, Captain. We could try to fly through it, but I don’t know that our shields would protect us from that much radiation. We could try a polaron burst to disrupt the cloud, then fly through it.”_

“Make it so, Commander.”

Naazt shared a look with the captain as they waited anxiously for the results of the polaron burst. A sharp increase in energy output from the EPS grid appeared on the console they’d commandeered from Lieutenant Johnson, followed by an equally sharp decrease in emissions from the energy cloud. The captain smiled wryly.

“Well, that seems to have worked.”

Almost immediately, the ship shuddered, and damage reports came flooding in on the master systems display, followed by the shrill red alert klaxon. The captain tapped his combadge again irritably.

“Murali to bridge, what happened?”

_“It’s the cloud, sir. It... pushed us back, then closed up the hole we made. It’s closing in on us now.”_

“How long do we have until it engulfs us, Commander?”

_“It’s growing slowly. At this rate, we have just under nine hours. There’s nothing to say it won’t accelerate, though.”_

“Agreed. Back us off to the center of our remaining space.” The old man turned to face Naazt. “Chief, I’m no engineer. Did that polaron burst work?”

“There’s no way to be completely sure, Captain, but I’d say it worked. The emissions dropped to a safe level during the burst, they just appeared again as soon as we stopped.”

“What would it take to emit a constant stream of polarons in a wide enough pattern to tunnel through the anomaly?”

Naazt did the math in his head and grimaced. “We’d need to make modifications to the main deflector, and reconfigure our shields to handle the load. At a starbase with a full engineering crew, I’d say half a day of work. With only what we have here...”

“You have nine hours, Chief, probably less.”

“We’ll get it done, Captain.”


	11. Chapter 11

“I find this whole scenario to be entirely perplexing,” Koltak grumbled as they and Renetta exited the last set of labs and made their way across the atrium. “We’ve interviewed every member of the science staff currently on duty, and while the problem is certainly widespread, its manifestations are bafflingly inconsistent.”

“Well, there’s one thing tying them all together, and that’s the fact that every problem has been electrical in origin, from computers to lights to sensors.” Renetta shrugged, “I know that’s not much, but it’s the only thing we seem to have to go off of.”

As the pair walked back into their own lab, they were confronted with a heavy atmosphere of frustration, teetering precariously on the brink of devolving into chaos. Screens around the room were flickering blue and several hands were tapping impatient fingers against the desk as the technicians and officers alike attempted to salvage their data from uncooperative devices. In addition, the ship’s computer in this lab had begun playing a high-pitched drone that was only a few hertz away from being immediately headache-inducing.

“Ugh!” Renetta covered her ears and scrunched up her face in displeasure. “This is horrible!” Not waiting for Koltak, she stormed off in the direction of the back study they had been in earlier. Shaking their head to clear the fog brought on by the insufferable noise, Koltak followed quickly behind, hoping that the sound from the computer would be dampened by walls and a door in the small alcove.

Fortunately for the two, the noisy malfunction only appeared to be affecting that particular section of the science wing. The doors slid shut behind the officers and they relished the relative silence of the tiny room.

“If the electrical malfunction is affecting the ship’s systems at random, it’s only a matter of time before it interferes with a critical system.” Koltak took a seat on the table, stretching out their legs and planting their heels on the floor as they leaned back and propped themself up with their arms.

Renetta assumed a similar position in one of the chairs, leaning back into the seat and letting her arms hang down at her sides. “That’s what has me so concerned, but Engineering says they’re working on it, so I don’t know that there’s anything else we can really do besides wait.”

An unprompted chirp from the neuro monitors drew Koltak’s attention from where they had been staring fixedly at the patterned carpet and over to the display, which was one of the few in their wing of the labs that had not defaulted to an error screen. Flat lines began to roll across the readout as the program initialized. They turned back to look at Renetta, but the young woman answered before the Gliesian had the chance to ask a question.

“Yeah, I see it.” She pointed at the display, “look, it’s starting to pick up a signal.”

Koltak turned back to the screen. Just as before, the readout was displaying a series of random spikes and wave formations with no discernible pattern to them. They watched as the bands displayed peaks and troughs in erratic spurts before abruptly flatlining. Disappointed, they regarded the small science officer again.

“The anomaly lasted longer the first time it occurred.”

Renetta shook her head and pointed back at the screen. “It’s not done. Look.”

They turned and saw that the interference had returned, but in a more organized manner. Instead of hectic scribbles on mismatched bands, Koltak noticed a distinct pattern. “Those frequencies correspond to heightened anxiety, or at least, they would if the neuro monitors were hooked up to anything.” They stood up and walked over to the screen, peering at it closely. “The high-beta bands between twenty-two and thirty-eight hertz are extremely active, but I don’t understand where the readings are coming from.”

“Hello?” Renetta called out to the room as she got to her feet. “Is anyone there?”

“What are you doing?”

“What if this isn’t just some electrical short? What if there’s more to this than meets the eye?” She turned around and spoke away from Koltak this time: “If you can hear us, we’re listening.”

“Your methods are crude at best…” Renetta turned around and gave Koltak an impatient look. “But,” they continued, holding up their hands defensively, “given the circumstances, it could be worth trying.”

“We’re here and we don’t want you to be scared,” she resumed. Renetta spoke as if she were trying to soothe a frightened child, and the woman began pacing the room slowly. “We’re only trying to figure out what’s going on, and we’re a little scared, too. It’s okay.” 

Koltak glanced back at the readout and noticed the high-beta bands subsiding, giving way to much slower alpha waves. _That doesn’t make sense._ “It seems… to have calmed down. But I don’t understand how.”

Silence fell in the room as the two officers and whatever was producing the electromagnetic readings on the display processed what was going on. The tranquility was interrupted by a low _thoom_ that resonated through the hull of the ship. The two scientists looked at one another.

“What was that?” Renetta asked. “It sounded like we fired something.”

A sudden disturbance on the screen caught Koltak’s attention from their peripheral vision, and they turned to see the readings scramble once again, all sense of order gone from the lines. “Whatever it was, it seems to have disturbed the readings we were getting.”

“Do you think whatever it was could have been sentient?”

“One data point is hardly enough information to form a conclusion, but your speech did seem to have an effect that correlated with typical brainwave patterns.” The tall alien shook their head and returned to their seat on the table in the middle of the small room. “What baffles me is how those readings came to be in the first place. There’s clearly nothing hooked up to the monitors.”

“What if it’s been studying us?” Renetta offered with a shrug. “If it’s in our computer, it can probably access your files from earlier, and if it’s able to do all that, taking things a step further and determining a simple pattern shouldn’t be much more difficult.”

“Why not just project a voice or spell something across the screen? That would be far more direct and less prone to misinterpretation.”

The high-pitched hum that the two had heard in the main wing of the lab when they’d entered from the atrium began emanating from the speakers in the study, interrupting their conversation. Renetta winced and Koltak’s fringes flattened against their scalp.

“The readout changed again!” Renetta shouted above the noise, her hands over her ears as it grew louder by the second.

Koltak’s attention gravitated back to the readout and noticed that the high-beta frequencies had become incredibly active again. There seemed little point in denying that whatever was causing the interference was intelligent on some level, and if the neuro monitor’s readings were to be believed, capable of emotion. “I believe we have made first contact, and whatever it is--”

Renetta cut them off to complete the thought as she walked over to the readout, uncovering her ears and letting in the full onslaught of the digital wailing coming from the ship’s computer. “It’s scared.”


	12. Chapter 12

“What exactly do you mean by ‘it’s alive’, Crewman?” Raj stared up at the eight-foot-tall Gliesian presenting to the senior staff in _Babel_ ’s observation lounge. He’d called a meeting immediately when the science department reported their findings and asked the duo who had made the discovery to present an overview of the situation, along with Lieutenant Caldwell, who had been overseeing the labs when the strange shipwide malfunctions began.

“We have found evidence suggesting that whatever is causing the electrical malfunctions onboard the ship is capable of some level of understanding. Ensign-- _Miss_ Benson and I observed readings gathered by the neuro monitors in my study that appeared to correlate to various emotional states. When presented with stimuli, the frequencies modulated to reflect readings corresponding to appropriate emotions.”

“Couldn’t electrical interference also create false readings with your instruments?” Lieutenant Barnes asked from across the table.

“That was my initial thought when the monitor first picked up on the interference. The data it generated didn’t correspond to any known brainwave patterns in the Federation database. Across all species, the patterns are fairly similar with only subtle variations.” Koltak stood and approached the screen embedded in the wall near the head of the table. “If I may,” they inserted a chip, and the display illuminated with three charts. “These patterns demonstrate the fear response in a human subject, taken from the Federation archive, a Gliesian subject, taken from my own readings, and the anomaly, gathered earlier today.”

They pressed a button and the charts began to scroll, showing a feed, which they paused a few moments later. “Next,” they gestured to Renetta, “my colleague began trying to calm the source of the readings.” With the press of another button, the charts began moving again. “What you see is the high-frequency beta waves subsiding as anxiety and fear give way to alpha waves, which are attributed to calmness.” They paused the playback once more and turned to address the room as a whole, making eye contact with the Chief of Security in particular. “While I realize these readings are far from conclusive, they do seem to follow enough of a recognizable trend to set it apart from mere white noise.”

Raj studied the charts the crewman brought up before leaning forward. “I won’t say I’m fully convinced, but this is certainly worth continuing to investigate. In the meantime, we’re continuing to see fluctuations in ship systems, some of which have been damaging. Doctor Dupont has three patients recovering from second-degree plasma burns after what happened in the torpedo bay half an hour ago. If these readings are coming from something alive out there in that energy cloud, what do you propose to do about it?”

“If it’s sentient, we try to learn more about it,” Lieutenant Caldwell asserted. “That’s part of why we’re out here, after all, isn’t it?”

“By all means continue to study this phenomenon, Lieutenant,” Raj replied. “But for now, we need real solutions that will get us out of danger. Chief Naazt, how long until your polaron tunneling project will be ready?”

Naazt looked up from the PADD he’d been frantically typing at during the meeting. “Sooner if you’d let me get back down there and work, Captain. Still, I think we should be ready to test it with an hour to spare. If my calculations are sound, we’ll eradicate about fifteen percent of the cloud outright, which will give us enough room to navigate safely outside. From there, we can warp to a safer area for a full diagnostic and repair.”

“Eradicate it!” Koltak interjected with more than a touch of anger staining their tone before they could catch themself. The Gliesian cleared their throat and started again. “If whatever is causing these disturbances is alive, we are obligated under the Prime Directive to find a peaceful solution.” They turned to the Chief Engineer with a stern face, their frills flattened back defensively. “Blowing holes in an unidentified lifeform does not sound particularly ‘peaceful’ to me, Lieutenant.”

“That’s enough, Crewman,” Raj snapped before the giant Gliesian could get more heated than they already were. “First, we don’t know whether it’s alive or not, and if you want me to protect it at the cost of endangering six hundred lives aboard this ship, you’re going to need to give me more convincing evidence. Second, the Prime Directive does not prevent us from defending ourselves from an attack, which this would certainly qualify as. Even if this thing is alive, I won’t hesitate to fight back if that’s the only way to save the crew I’m responsible for. But finally, and most importantly, I want everyone here to remember that we still have time. I want the engineering team to explore our options and develop a way out of here, even if it’s the last resort. Crewman Rygelix, it was your equipment and experiments that found these signs of potential life, so it will be you that continues the investigation into what this thing is. Knowing that it is a sentient lifeform, if that’s what you determine, isn’t enough to do anything about the situation we’re in. We need to find a way to convince it to back down, otherwise, we’re right where we started. Now, you have your orders. Any questions?”

As the assembled staff glanced nervously around the room, it was clear that there were none, or at least none that would be voiced aloud. “Alright, then. You’re dismissed.”


	13. Chapter 13

Renetta and David exited the briefing behind the senior staff and headed for an empty turbolift, sending it in the direction of Deck Eleven.

“That was incredibly tense,” the dark-haired woman said with a shudder as if to shake off the stress clinging to her from the meeting. “I hate meetings like that.”

David wrapped a reassuring arm around her shoulder and pulled her a little closer. “Everyone’s just concerned about what’s going on lately. You guys will figure this out, and the engineering teams will have us prepared, just in case. Come on, you’re a scientist. You should know the value of having more data and more tools better than anyone, even if we don’t end up needing them today.”

“I know, and you’re right, but if there really is a life on the line, I’d hate for this all to lead to some disaster borne of misunderstanding.” She sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder, letting some of her weight fall onto his arm as she wrapped her own around his back. “This whole situation just feels too rushed. I get that we’re in a sticky situation, but if we make the wrong move, we could end up anywhere from dead to seriously in trouble with the Federation.” _And Koltak is kind of terrifying when he-- she-- they? are angry. They’re usually so quiet, but this seems to have them really upset._ “I just don’t like the odds.”

David removed his arm and turned her around to face him, holding her shoulders tight. “Hey,” he said with a sudden intensity in his brown eyes. “We’re going to be alright. You’re going to figure out what that energy cloud really is, and between your mad science skills, the Captain’s experience, and the most advanced equipment in the Federation at our disposal, we’ll make it out okay and learn something incredible, because that’s what Starfleet officers do. Now I may be just a pilot, but I know how smart you are, and I believe in you. You’ve got this.”

Renetta giggled at his phrasing and met his gaze once she’d finished. “You’re right,” she said with a smile this time. “I just let my worries get away from me sometimes. What would I do without you to keep me grounded?” She stood up on her toes and gave him a quick kiss just as the turbolift came to an abrupt halt, throwing both of them off balance. Renetta braced against David, sending them both tipping back into the nearest wall with a thud.

“Sorry!” Renetta exclaimed, taking a step back to give David room to stand back up. She looked around, confused when the doors didn’t open. “Well, that can’t be good. I think it’s stuck.”

“With all of the glitches going around, I’m a bit surprised the turbolifts haven’t had issues until now,” David added.

“Well, if it’s anything like most of the issues, it should just be a passing glitch. Otherwise, we could be here a while.” She leaned against the back wall, thinking of ways to pass the time in case the turbolift took a while to restart. The two of them hadn’t had many opportunities for quality time besides the occasional meal together since the holodeck date. Her stomach did a happy somersault at the memory of the evening. “Hey, you know, when all of this is said and done, we ought to make good on that dinner date at my place.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” he said with a grin. “Just say the word and I’ll be there.”

“Alright. We can go all out: Wine, music, candles, fine food, and formal attire -- I mean, if that’s something you’d like. Otherwise, we can keep it more casual.” Her cheeks turned a light shade of pink. “It’d just be nice to, you know, have a real dinner together instead of a tired post-shift meal. I love those, but… I think we should do it differently this time. Something a little more…”

He pulled her into a long kiss before she could finish her sentence. When he finally pulled away, he tucked a wayward curl behind her ear and smiled, his face now the same rosy hue as her own. “It sounds perfect. I’ll be looking forward to it.”

The turbolift lurched back into motion as the two of them held hands and exchanged a wordless gaze laden with shared sentiment. The sudden resumption of descent drew their attention back to the present. David lightly squeezed Renetta’s hand and faced the door as it opened to the hall of Deck Eleven. As he stepped out, Renetta quirked a small, infatuated smile as she waved to him, the doors closing quietly between them. She leaned back against the wall with a contented sigh and stared with daydreamy eyes up at the ceiling. “Deck Twenty-Five.”


	14. Chapter 14

Raj watched as the senior staff filed out of the conference room. When the room was empty, he stood from his chair and began to pace up and down the length of the room, pausing occasionally to look out the thick windows. The energy cloud - he refused to call it a lifeform without solid proof - shimmered in every direction in a wide array of colors, like the auroras on Earth that Rebecca had been so fond of. Just as in those trips a lifetime ago, the view was beautiful beyond words. He stood, mesmerized, for a few minutes until the blinking display from one of the wall monitors pulled him out of his reverie. Raj sighed and cleared the display with the push of a button. No, this was more than just a pretty sight to study and wonder at. It was also a prison cell, slowly closing in around him, threatening everyone he had sworn to protect. That image grew in his mind, overwhelming and suffocating, and the walls of the conference room seemed like they too were closing in.

The door to the bridge could not open fast enough, and he nodded to Shannon as he made for the turbolift. 

"You have the bridge, Commander."

"Aye, sir," she replied, only a hint of worry showing on her face.

The turbolift doors shut, and he listed his destination as Deck Ten. Raj had never been an overly sociable person, nor did he intend to start now, but there was a certain comfort to be gained from seeing people go about their lives, relaxing and spending time with friends or family. He made a nondescript entrance to the Ten-Forward lounge, acknowledging the few who noticed him with a polite nod. He sat down at a table in the corner with a good view out the windows. The energy cloud, of course, was just as visible here as it had been on the bridge. 

"Can I help you, Captain?" Raj stiffened at the man's voice, and he waved a hand away reflexively.

"No, thank you. I'm not really in the mood for a drink."

Instead of leaving, the other man pulled out a chair and sat down next to him.

"I didn't ask if you needed a drink. I asked if I could help."

This time, Raj turned to face the newcomer, annoyed at the interruption and already reaching for a few choice words. When he looked the man in the eyes, though, he stopped. He was an older man, perhaps older even than Raj, with wrinkled, leathery skin and cool grey eyes. Raj had seen him only briefly during his official tour of the ship shortly after coming aboard and hadn't yet spoken to Ten-Forward's official manager.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe we’ve actually met.”

“You’re right, of course,” the man drawled in an accent Raj found familiar, but couldn’t quite place. “The name’s Hob.”

“It’s good to meet you, Hob,” Raj said irritably. “And why is it that you think I’m in need of any help?”

“You’re sitting by yourself at the corner table, for one. I know this ship hasn’t been flying for long, but so far there’s never been anyone sitting alone at this table that didn’t need help with something.”

“Something tells me you’re not just going to leave me alone, are you?”

Hob smiled and leaned back in his chair. “I suppose you could order me to leave you alone, and I would if you ordered me to. But something tells _me_ that you’re not going to, so why don’t you tell me what decision it is that's got you so distressed?”

Raj waited for an eternity before he spoke. "This crew," he said, gesturing out at the off-duty crewmen and officers drinking, talking and otherwise relaxing throughout the lounge, "relies on me to keep them safe. I trust them to do their jobs, and they trust me to make the right call when challenged with all kinds of threats."

"And is their trust unwarranted?"

"Of course not."

"But you have other responsibilities, too. Ones that could conflict with your responsibility to our safety. Not just your orders, though they're important too, but ethical responsibilities."

"Have you been reading my personal logs, Mister Hob, or am I just an open book?"

"Please, Captain, just call me Hob." The old man smiled and leaned forward with a conspiratorial grin. "I've faced down choices like yours a time or two in my life, and they're never easy. But the fact that you're here means you already know what you'll do if forced to show your hand. You're just here to remind yourself of the cost."

"If you're so sure you've been in my shoes before, Hob, did it work out well for you?"

Hob's smile faded. "Sometimes it did. Sometimes... it didn't. What I remember most vividly is that it never went how I expected, no matter how well I prepared. Whatever decision you make, just make sure it’s one you can live with."

Somehow, Hob’s grim advice didn’t make Raj feel any better.


	15. Chapter 15

“I don’t see how we’re going to prove that whatever we’re dealing with is sentient from a few scattered neuro monitor readings,” Koltak grumbled. They were leaning against the wall of the study with their arms folded across their chest, glaring down their nose at the tiny, dark-haired woman sitting with her legs folded in one of the chairs near the table.

“Well, if you approach it with that attitude, we’re not going to get anywhere.” Renetta leaned her head back and stretched her shoulders. “If you go into something expecting to fail, you probably will.”

“Statistically, that doesn’t make much sense.”

Renetta groaned and brought her forehead to her palms, rubbing at her eyes before emphatically patting her uniformed legs. “Okay, the point is that we need to figure out a way to establish contact with… whatever we’re dealing with here. This spatial anomaly or energy being has _Babel_ surrounded and, unless we can work out a way to subdue it soon, Captain Murali and his band of Merry Engineers are going to blow a hole straight through it.”

Koltak’s frills raised and fell as they contemplated the young officer’s curious expression, ultimately deciding against asking anything further. “Working on a tight timeframe is going to be difficult, even without it having access to the ship’s computers.”

The physicist’s confident expression faltered. “I hadn’t thought to account for that.”

“Account for what? You forgot that the _energy being_ could access the ship’s computers?” Their tone carried an unusual note of sarcasm that took Renetta by surprise as her eyebrows arched momentarily before furrowing.

“Hey, I’m still not entirely sure what it is we’re dealing with here. We have no idea if it’s hostile or what it’s capable of. All we know is that it can register on the same frequencies as our brainwave scanner and that it seems to show intelligent responses.”

“Most things aren’t hostile unless they feel cornered,” Koltak shot back. “If someone started putting holes in your body, I can’t imagine you’d feel terribly content.”

“Koltak, it’s damaging our systems! I want to prove that it’s worth saving as much as you do, but it would be naïve to assume there were no risks involved!”

“Is Federation policy always to shoot first and ask questions later?”

“No! We have a crew to defend, and you want us to just throw that out the window and hope for the best!”

“Well, maybe, if we approached negotiations without our torpedo bays loaded, discussions would be considerably less volatile.”

Renetta got to her feet and took a couple of firm steps toward the Gliesian. “You really don’t see the problem here, do you? You are so blinded by your desire to make friends with this potentially-deadly cloud of… _whatever_ that you genuinely don’t see the problem with lowering our weapons and letting it just shake hands with the ship.”

Koltak also stood to their full height, towering well over the head of the tiny human female and glowering down at her with a stare full of anger like she’d never seen. “I do understand the risks, but unlike you and all others on this ship who see no problems with war and conflict in the name of progress, I don’t believe that fighting our way out is the answer.”

The lights flickered in the room and Milo appeared in the doorway shortly after. “Hey, I don’t know what you two are up to in here, but I’ve got a couple of things to mention. First, keep it down. They can hear you all the way over in Geology. Second, keep it down, these doors are way thinner than you think. Third,” he pointed at the display on the desk behind where Koltak continued to loom over Renetta, “look at the screens.” He backed out of the doorway and gestured to the stations throughout their wing of the lab. Each one was black with bold white lettering stretched across it reading **STOP**.

Renetta dropped down from where she stood on her toes and Koltak leaned back on their heels, their shadow retreating from its place over the physicist. The two looked at each other for a moment before the small woman asked, “Is that… our fault? I mean, do you think it’s the creature outside?”

“Unless your voices are echoing all the way to engineering and you’ve managed to tick off someone with quick fingers and a sense of humor, I’d wager a bet that it’s your electrical friend. It appears to have learned a thing or two during its time in _Babel_ ’s computer system.”

“If it can learn, then it has the potential to be reasoned with,” Koltak asserted. “There has to be a way.”

“A way?” Milo raised an eyebrow and leaned against the doorframe. “A way to what, talk to it?”

Renetta sighed. “Captain Murali’s objective is to get the ship out of danger. If we can’t find a way to negotiate with the energy cloud and get it to back off, his plan is to fire a polaron burst into it and tunnel our way out. Koltak isn’t a fan of the latter option.”

“No one should be.” The boiling anger had left their voice, but the impertinence was still there.

“Well, if we’re working against the clock, standing here arguing about semantics isn’t doing anyone any favors,” Milo said, closing the door behind him and opening up a program on the study computer.

“What are you doing?” Renetta asked, peeking around his shoulder.

He pulled up the most basic text editor he could find and typed, **ARE YOU THERE?** “Establishing contact.”

“You assume it knows English,” Koltak stated flatly.

“It knew the word ‘stop’ and the context in which to use it.” He turned and stared up at the towering multicolored alien. “For someone who is so quick to defend this creature, you sure don’t give it much intellectual credit.”

Koltak opened their mouth and closed it again. He was right, though they weren’t about to admit it. Their frills flared twice as they took a deep breath and tried to quell their latent frustration.

“How is it going to know we’re waiting for it?” Renetta squinted at the blinking cursor on the blank line below Milo’s simple message.

“It’s found you before, hasn’t it? Give it a chance, and I’m sure it’ll find you again.”


	16. Chapter 16

Thriss set her toolkit down in the Jefferies tube junction between Decks Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four. She popped a panel free from the wall and began scanning for faults in the EPS grid. Sure enough, the power flow was entirely too strong here for the conduits to maintain for much longer. She made a note of the affected section on her PADD and put the panel back. In the time since their initial polaron burst, the abnormal subsystem behavior on the ship had tripled. For a while, they had been able to counteract the strange power fluctuations in the EPS grid remotely, but that was before the malfunctions spread to the EPS control system. Since then, engineering teams had been crawling about the ship, searching subsection by subsection for any anomalies, which would then be addressed manually by adjusting the power flow at each deck’s primary EPS node. 

Her antennae twitched instinctively as she sensed the echoes of a man’s form appear behind her. She finished sealing the panel back into place, then turned to face him.

“Lieutenant Johnson?”

“How many times do I have to tell you to just call me Jack, Thriss?” the man replied.

“Jack, then. Was there something you needed?”

“Well, I just finished up on Deck Twenty-Two, and I was going to get a head start down here. I see you beat me to it.”

Thriss pointed up at her antennae. “These are good for more than not being surprised by you, Jack. The problem conduits are just running too hot. I can pick them out faster than you can run a tricorder scan. Still, I’m not sure what good it’s going to do. This cloud is rerouting power faster than we can fix it, even before we lost the main control system.”

The dark-haired man shrugged. “We’re engineers, Thriss. We fix them as fast as we can, and when that’s not enough, we find a new way to fix them. Besides, Naazt has deflector control locked down while he finishes his modifications. Give him another hour or two and this’ll just be another footnote in some Starfleet technical manual.”

Thriss frowned at the thought of the polaron burst, and its effect on the strange energy cloud now surrounding them. Shortly after the emergency staff meeting, rumors had trickled down to the engineering teams that the anomaly might actually be alive, though no one could agree on whether it was true, or if it was hostile toward _Babel_ or just an innocent bystander. Most of the crew carried on with their orders, trusting that the senior staff knew what they were doing, but Thriss couldn’t shake the feeling that what they were doing might just be wrong.

“Thriss? You alright?” Jack asked, an eyebrow raised.

She shook her head. “Sorry, just thinking. Jack, what if this thing really _is_ alive?”

“Isn’t that a question for a Command officer? The way I see it, if it’s trying to kill us, we don’t need to feel bad about flicking it in the nose. If it’s an intelligent lifeform, maybe it’ll figure out what that means and leave us alone.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Jack shrugged again. “Then we do what we have to, right? You’re not suggesting we actually let this thing kill us?”

“No, of course not,” she said with a sigh. “I just thought... I don’t know, maybe there’s a better way to get it to leave us alone. We still don’t know what it is, or where it came from, or what it’s doing. Why is it that the first thing we’re trying to do is shoot it until it goes away? Does that sound like a Starfleet solution to you?”

Johnson’s eyes widened and Thriss realized with a start that she had clenched her right hand into a tight fist, and her grip on the PADD in her other hand threatened to damage the device if she didn’t relax. _Damn it, Thriss, get a grip,_ she thought, trying to subdue her anger. 

A loud pop interrupted her next thought, and both of them swung their heads around to face the panel Thriss had just replaced, which was now lying on the ground, smoke rising from the fried EPS conduit it had been covering. 

“Now you’ve done it,” Jack teased. “You got all angry and scared our magic cloud friend.”

“All the more reason for us to keep working,” she snapped back at him, picking up her toolkit and crawling toward the next panel. _He’s right about one thing, though. Alive or not, friendly or not, it’s not like I can do anything about it but fix these stupid EPS conduits._


	17. Chapter 17

The three science officers stood in varied states of slumped resignation around the small study. Koltak had laid back on the long table with their legs dangling over the side and was staring up at the ceiling. Renetta was spinning slowly in one of the chairs that she’d pulled away from the table, and Milo was fussing with the remaining colored cube that Koltak had left on the desk after their experiment earlier in the shift. All three of them were rapidly losing hope that their attempt at conversation with the unfamiliar entity had any chance of success.

Milo’s face was twisted in concentration as he twirled sections of the cube this way and that, finally matching the final colors to the respective faces. “Hey!” He announced loudly, startling the other two scientists, “I got it!”

“Wonderful,” Koltak responded colorlessly as they placed their head back down where it had been resting on the table for the better part of an hour.

Renetta stopped spinning and walked over to the computer screen on the wall by the desk. The cursor continued to blink on the empty line below Milo’s entry. She turned to look at him, his thrilled expression rapidly fading. The dark-haired woman took the cube from his hand and began reshuffling it. “Milo, I get the feeling that we might have to wait longer than we physically can for this being to answer your prompt. It’s been almost an hour already and we haven’t had so much as a blip since the computers went nuts.”

“Maybe it has to recharge after doing something like that,” he offered hopefully, looking at the colorful cube rather than at Renetta’s face. He seemed perturbed that she’d been so quick to undo all of his hard work.

“Recharge or not, the small one has a point,” Koltak said, continuing to stare at the ceiling. Renetta turned and glared at the exceedingly tall figure lying on the table. Koltak ignored the woman. “If we can’t initiate a conversation with the entity surrounding the ship and convince it to back down, there’s no telling what kind of damage the captain’s plan to get us out alive will do.”

Milo crossed his arms over his chest and shifted his weight defensively. “Alright, so what are you suggesting? I tried my idea. You give us something.”

“Previous responses have been the result of intense emotional outbursts, have they not?”

Renetta felt her face growing warmer as she thought through the events of that day, focusing on her exchange with David in the turbolift. “They do seem to correlate,” she said stiffly.

“So, what? Are we supposed to start a fight?” The carrot-topped scientist snatched back the cube from Renetta and began rearranging the faces.

“While that might work, I was thinking we might be better served by creating a welcoming environment for it.”

“What, like some kind of group meditation?” Milo tried hard not to laugh at the suggestion.

“No, no,” Renetta interjected, pointing at the Gliesian and turning to the computer, closing the program Milo had opened. “Koltak makes a good point. If we can all focus on a similar, welcoming emotion, it might help the being hone in on us.” She pulled up the neuro monitor program from earlier and connected the devices to the computer. “There isn’t a lot we know about this creature, but it seems to respond to emotion. We’ve been sitting here doing nothing for an hour and wondering why it hasn’t come looking for us. I think we need to invite it in its own language.”

Koltak sat up and straightened their uniform. “The question is, what non-aggressive emotion is strong enough to get its attention?”

“Love!” Renetta exclaimed with more enthusiasm than she’d intended.

This time, Milo didn’t hold back his laughter. “That’s so gimmicky!”

Renetta socked him in the arm. “It’s one of the strongest human emotions, and it’s about as non-threatening as you can get.” She assessed the responses of her crewmates. Milo continued to look skeptical and Koltak looked like they were losing hope in the initiative altogether. “Come on, if you don’t think you can do it, I’ll get someone who can.” Wasting no time, she turned and headed for the door.

“Where are you-” Milo’s question was cut off by the closing of the study door as Renetta marched confidently out of their wing of the lab and across the atrium to the planetary sciences wing. Striding through their door, she gave the crew the courtesy of walking herself to the back of the lab where Jeremy sat, still staring at the PADD from earlier.

“Lieutenant!” Renetta chirped, startling the broad-shouldered man.

“Hey, you’re back!” He smiled cheerily, recovering quickly and flawlessly from his fright. “Any luck with your first contact mission over there?”

She shook her head. “No, but we have an idea that might work, I just don’t know if the others are up to it.”

“And somehow I got myself signed up as the understudy for your little production?”

Renetta put her hands on her hips. “It’s not a production and you’re one of the more emotional people I know on the crew, so consider it a compliment. We’re running out of time and running out of options.”

“Alright, alright, relax.” He held his hands up defensively, “I didn’t realize things had been going so poorly for you. How can I help?”

“We’ve noticed that the entity seems to respond to strong emotion. Most of those responses have been anger and frustration, but I don’t think that’s what it wants. I’ve also seen it respond to love.”

The subtle look of a single raised eyebrow and mild smirk implied the same sentiments that Milo had expressed just moments earlier. Renetta frowned.

“Don’t give me that look. I came to you for help, not to be heckled for my ideas. I just spent an hour waiting for a cloud of electricity to type out a chat message while Koltak took a nap on a table. This hasn’t exactly been the best afternoon.”

Jeremy laughed, though not out of malice, and got up from his seat. “Alright, then explain how I can help on our way over.”


	18. Chapter 18

The group sat in a semicircle around the screen showing the neuromonitor readouts. It had been five minutes already, and the flat, droning lines of the display had shown no change and no fluctuation.

Milo sighed loudly and his chair creaked as he leaned back in it. “I don’t think this is going to work, Renetta.”

The young woman opened her eyes and looked around at everyone else. They were still trying to remain lost in pleasant thoughts, or so it seemed. She glared at Milo. “Well, it’s not going to speak to us and it isn’t going to walk through the doors, so I’m not sure we have many other options.”

“I’m still not convinced that what you and Koltak saw earlier wasn’t just some equipment anomaly or electrical malfunction.” He looked pointedly and the unwavering neuromonitor readout and back at Renetta.

“So you side with the captain then?” Her comment was less of a question and more of a disapproving statement.

“At this point, yeah.” He shrugged and folded his arms across his chest. “What I see is a series of flukey events with results you can’t seem to replicate. To me, that sounds like a malfunction, not a discovery.”

Renetta stood up. Her patience had been worn thin, and she hated feeling like she was being backed into a corner. “Then leave,” she said, pointing to the door. “The chances of it working when everyone is invested in the cause are probably higher than if you stick around here doubting the whole cause.”

Milo stood up as well and furrowed his brows. “Excuse me for trying to give constructive feedback. I thought, as a fellow scientist, you might like to hear the objective facts of the matter. I suppose I was wrong.” He turned and walked out the door of the study and back into the lab.

Renetta glared after him for a moment before turning her attention back to the room. All eyes were on her. She could feel her stomach folding in on itself with embarrassment. Before she could think of something to say in her defense, Koltak spoke up.

“Good, he was an unnecessary variable.”

Jeremy turned to look at the Gliesian with a single eyebrow raised but chose to say nothing.

Renetta sat back down with a huff, pushing her chair back a couple of inches. “Maybe this is a futile effort.”

“Futile or not, we have to try,” Koltak protested. “As far as we know, we are the one line of defense between _Babel_ ’s weapons and whatever is out there.”

“So what do we do? Do we sit here and keep trying to establish contact until our time runs out?”

Koltak shrugged. “I see no better options.”

Renetta looked to Jeremy, who had been sitting silently on the far side of the semicircle of chairs. “What do you think? You haven’t said a whole lot.”

“I think trying to establish contact with a being that’s shown signs of intelligence is a noble effort…”

“But…?” Renetta prompted.

“But I don’t know if this is the best way to go about it.” Jeremy paused for a moment before adding, “I don’t know that there _is_ a best way to go about it. This is uncharted territory we’re working with here, and it’s pretty far outside of my realm of expertise.” He looked to the tall blue figure seated on the table. “You’re an exobiologist. Out of the three of us, you’re probably the most qualified to come up with an answer.”

Koltak’s frills flattened against their head and they seemed to shrink into their uniform slightly. “Just because I am an exobiologist does not automatically make me a reigning authority on all things living.”

“No, but you have been present for the majority of the gathered evidence we have on this creature’s ability to feel and reason. That has to mean something.” Renetta glanced beside her to the screen and noticed tiny peaks on the flat lines. “Hey, look, I think we’ve got something.”

Koltak stood up and squinted at the measurements. “It’s not enough to define it from background noise, but it is certainly different from what we had before.”

“What changed?” Jeremy asked. “Milo left and we started talking, but how could that affect the readings?”

“Maybe it’s a more welcoming atmosphere?” Renetta proposed. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel particularly comfortable walking into a silent room full of people. Maybe now that we’re talking it feels invited somehow?”

The Gliesian raised a finger to one of the lines on the readout, which was now showing a steadily increasing amount of activity. “I think we may have gotten its attention.”

“Now what?” Renetta asked, feeling a pang of momentary panic.

“Keep talking about it,” Koltak prompted. “Talk about your interests and concerns. Imagine you are making a conversation that it could join if it wanted to. If that’s the theory we’re working with, let’s keep things consistent.”

“Okay, uh,” Renetta stammered.

“So, we want to know what this is, right?” Jeremy picked up smoothly. “We know that it’s some sort of energy-based entity, but we don’t know much else about it. We’ve seen it access our ship’s computers, mess with electronics, and show some kind of readings on Koltak’s device over there.”

“They’re brainwave readings,” they clarified. “Based on what we’ve seen, the entity seems to show feelings similar to ours. I haven’t had much to work with, so it could have been a convenient set of electrical impulses, but I choose to believe it’s more... intelligent than that.”

“Have we seen it interact with anything physical?” Jeremy asked.

“Not that I’ve heard,” Renetta answered, noticing Koltak focusing intently on the readout as more lines jumped to life. “As far as I know, everything has been electrical in nature.”

“I believe we are being studied,” Koltak interrupted.

“What?” Renetta stood up and walked over to the screen. “How can you tell?”

A blue and green finger pointed to a series of chaotic lines on the screen. “It’s problem-solving. That’s the same pattern that you and I exhibited when trying to solve those puzzle cubes.”

“Fascinating.” Renetta tilted her head as the lines morphed. “What’s it doing now?”

“It seems… happy, I believe.” Koltak stood up from their hunched position in front of the display.

“Should we warn it about the captain’s plan?” Renetta asked in a hushed voice. “I feel like it has a right to know, and if we tell it, maybe we can also tell it to back away.”

Koltak’s attention turned to the screen as the lines jumped and shifted again. Their frills flared outward slightly. “You do realize that the volume of your voice does not affect the volume of your thoughts?”

Renetta sucked in her lips and looked, wide-eyed, from Koltak to Jeremy and back. “Well, I guess it knows something is up.”

“If that’s the case, there’s no sense withholding the information from it,” Jeremy said, getting to his feet. “The sooner it knows that the captain plans to force his way through unless the entity backs off, the sooner we can get to work on finding a solution.”

The room lights dimmed and Renetta felt her pulse quicken. “What’s happening?”

“I believe we have upset it,” Koltak said blandly, once again staring at the readout.

“Why do you sound so calm about that? This thing could toast the entire ship if it wanted to!”

“Renetta, take it easy,” Jeremy cautioned. “Getting worked up likely won’t help matters.”

The room lights dimmed again. “We should inform the entity that this isn’t a definitive outcome. It needs to know that its actions determine what happens.” Koltak looked out into the lab beyond the study. The lights in that room, and, from what they could tell from inside the study, the atrium lights, were also dimmed. They looked back to the display and noticed the spiking lines quickening. “It’s panicking.”

“What do we do?” Renetta asked, her voice strained. The lights in the room went out, followed by the lab and the atrium. The three officers were left in complete darkness, save for the light of their display.

“Koltak…?” Renetta squeaked.

“It appears we have upset it.” The sound of defeat in their voice was unmistakable. “It is frightened, and it is not happy.”

Jeremy tapped his combadge. “Science to Engineering, we’ve established contact with the entity, and it appears to be on the defensive. All lights are out in Main Science.”


	19. Chapter 19

“Chief, we’ve lost internal comms,” Thriss reported as she read the diagnostic screen, which was currently displaying a complete communications blackout across the ship. This made the second ship-wide system shutdown after the entire turbolift network had gone down less than an hour prior. The engineering teams doing repair work had been forced to use the Jefferies tube network just to get from floor to floor, which had cut their rate of work to a crawl. Without internal communications, they would be forced to return all the way to Main Engineering just to find out where to go next.

“Acknowledged, Ensign,” Naazt replied, furiously working away at another station.

Without warning, _Babel_ shuddered, and damage reports popped up on nearly every screen in Main Engineering. 

“What was that?” the Captain asked impatiently. 

“We’re losing the structural integrity field,” Naazt snapped in reply. “Captain, we’ve waited as long as we can. We need to trigger the polaron burst and fight our way through.”

The Captain’s face looked weary and pained, but he nodded, and Thriss felt a knot tighten in her stomach. _No, this isn’t right. There has to be another way!_ She could feel the anger welling up again, and pushed it down with all the effort she could muster. She picked up a toolkit in a vice-like grip and stormed off toward the hallway.

“Ensign, where are you going?” Naazt asked as she brushed by the MSD. 

“More EPS relays are failing,” she said tightly. “I can fix them faster than anyone else here can.”


	20. Chapter 20

Thriss dropped the toolkit as soon as she was in the Jefferies tube. She climbed down the ladder to the first junction between Deck Twenty-Four and Deck Twenty-Five and turned down the small passageway. She made two more turns before the tears welling up in her eyes completely blinded her, and she slumped against the wall with a cry of surrender.

“Damn it!”

She swore again, and again, in standard Federation English, her native Andorian, and even slipped in a few choice Tellarite curses she’d learned from observing Chief Naazt. She swore and slammed her fists against the bulkhead until her throat was raw and her hands felt numb. Finally, she hugged her knees to her chest and let the tears fall freely. _What am I doing here? I should have known better. Why did I think Starfleet would help me escape who I am? Is it really not any different here? I always thought that the other Federation species were... different, somehow. More refined, more civilized. Now, I suppose they’re no different than we are. When our backs are against the wall, are we really all killers at heart?_

Her thoughts drifted back to her home, deep underground on frigid Andoria, and on the rigid order and discipline that had been her life for so long. She thought of Rashan and his desperate plea for her to stay. She thought of her last glimpse of home from the shuttlecraft window as she left for Earth and Starfleet Academy. She remembered the awe and wonder she'd felt when she first stepped into Archer Hall, and the hope she'd finally found in the dedication plaque honoring the Starfleet Captain, and later Federation President, who had made the entire Federation possible. Captain Archer’s history with Andoria proved her species could put aside their aggression and hostility and work toward a common, peaceful cause. Since that fateful day she’d left her home, her family and her future behind, Thriss had held onto that hope that she, too, could find a way to be more than her biology, and be a part of something nobler.

 _Not that it’s any good, now,_ she thought helplessly. _The only people who seem to think the way I do are still in the science labs..._

With a start, she realized where she was sitting, only a deck above those very labs, where her last chance to save her conscience might be. Wiping the drying tears away with a sleeve, she scrambled toward the nearest access hatch, climbed down, and emerged on Deck Twenty-Five. The lights were completely dark, and she swore again as she remembered her flashlight was still sitting in the discarded toolkit. Working from memory and aided by the echo her antennae picked up from her heavy footfalls, she set out in search of the labs.


	21. Chapter 21

Koltak, Renetta, and Jeremy waited in silence for a response over the combadge. The Gliesian could hear Jeremy tap the pin again, only for it to emit the squelching beep that indicated no signal. Their last remaining source of light, the monitor on the wall, winked out. Jeremy groaned in the darkness.

“Great, and comms are down,” he grunted. A chair squeaked.

“I wonder if power is out to the whole ship,” Renetta asked, her uniform rustling as she repositioned herself.

As the other two talked amongst themselves, Koltak let the silence fill their mind and thought about the implications of the last few hours. They had just established contact with another sentient, feeling being. Their interactions with the entity proved beyond doubt that what surrounded them was, indeed, alive. It was a groundbreaking discovery. Most importantly, despite its reaction, the ship was still in one piece. It did not want to fight.

“It’s a passive lifeform,” Koltak interjected with no context. The other two stopped talking.

“What?” Renetta asked through the blackness.

“The entity outside the ship. The energy being. It is a nonviolent species.”

“I don’t know that I entirely agree with you, but humor me. Why do you think that?” They could hear Jeremy standing up as he spoke, part of him bumping into a nearby chair.

“If it had wanted to destroy us, it could have done so in an instant. We have established contact with a new species, confirmed its sentience, and in spite of having frightened it, the ship is still in one piece. I believe it could have destroyed us if it wanted to, but it didn’t.”

The room was quiet. Outside in the lab, other scientists were feeling their way around in the dark, trying to make it to the exits. Someone strained against the closed door, trying to push it open.

“Even if it didn’t kill us, it’s trapped our entire department like bugs in a jar,” Jeremy pointed out. “That isn’t exactly what I’d call a friendly gesture.”

“No, but Koltak has a point,” Renetta asserted. “We’ve seen this entity get into the computers, mess with lights, shut down turbolifts, and rattle the entire vessel -- as far as we know, it could do just about anything it wanted to this ship. For something acting out of fear, it looks like it only targeted the science labs.”

“And shut down shipwide communications and who knows what else,” Jeremy muttered.

The Gliesian took control of the conversation once again. “The point still stands that we are still alive. I believe the best course of action is to reason with it like we would with any other species.”

Renetta’s uniform swished again in the darkened room. “But if it’s in a panic and our power is down, how are we supposed to contact it?”

A loud thump from out in the wing of the lab beyond the study interrupted their debate. Koltak walked over to the door with their hands out in front of them and stopped when they felt the smooth glass. From what they could see through the sliver of the open doorway out of the lab beyond the study, a faint glow seemed to be tracing the gaping curves of the atrium. Koltak felt along the surface of the study door and slid their fingers into the crease where the two panes of glass met, prying it open.

Footsteps filled the void outside their study as officers filed out of the lab and into the echoing atrium. The glow coalesced into a beam of light just outside the two sets of doors and flicked around, searching. It wove its way into the lab and soon after found Koltak’s face. They recoiled, squinting.

“You know, that’s rather bright,” they said, grimacing.

“You’re welcome,” came a woman’s irritated voice. As Koltak’s eyes began to adjust to the new light source, they could make out a distinctly Andorian silhouette, standing at a height that most Federation species would consider tall, and a pair of alert antennae twitching to provide a second sight from the echoing of the people in the room.

Koltak’s frills flattened back to their head for a moment before they could take a deep breath and relax. Their shoulders released tension they hadn’t realized was there, and the towering alien stepped aside, out of the doorway and out of the glare of the beam of light. “Is there something we can help you with? The three of us were in the middle of a meeting.”

Jeremy shouldered past and over to the Andorian engineer in the doorway, extending a hand to her as he shot Koltak a warning look. “Hi there. Lieutenant Caldwell. I called down to engineering a little while ago but I don’t think the message ever went through. We’ve been discussing the energy being and what to do about it.” He led the Andorian woman into the room, offering to take her flashlight and prop it up on the table. “Shortly before we lost power in the labs, we managed to establish contact with the entity and carry out a sort of conversation. As soon as we mentioned the polaron bursts, it fled, knocking taking the floor’s power with it.”

The woman froze at the mention of the alien entity. “So... it really _is_ alive, then?”

All three of the officers in the room replied affirmatively with varying degrees of excitement.

“From what we can tell, the being communicates through energy patterns,” Jeremy began explaining before Koltak cut him off.

“We’ve been able to communicate through feeling, to be more precise, but its responses have been measurable through neurocortical monitors calibrated to read brainwaves. We do not believe that the entity is capable of speech, but it does respond on an emotional level.”

Instead of shared excitement, the woman’s face turned to horror. “They’re going to kill it,” she managed with a heavy breath. “We have to do something.”

Koltak felt their whole body tense and their blood pressure rise. They clenched their fists. “They’re _what_?”

Renetta suddenly appeared by their side and placed a gentle hand on their sleeve, giving their arm a tiny squeeze. “What can we do? I don’t think the captain is going to change his mind at this point.”

“He’s already given the order,” the Andorian woman continued. “Naazt and his team will be getting a backup generator running now, and then they can fire the deflector.”

The room fell silent again as the gravity of the situation settled in. If the order has already been given, there was little to no chance of stopping things. In the dim light of the room, Koltak’s eyes focused on the neuro monitor sitting on the table. They stood up straighter as an idea dawned on them.

“What if we reprogram the deflector?”

“She just said they were getting ready to fire it,” Jeremy snapped.

“What did you have in mind?” the Andorian asked.

Koltak mentally ran through their research as they spoke. “If we know what frequencies it communicates on, there’s a chance that a series of impulses broadcast between point-five Hertz and three Hertz could calm it down and give _Babel_ more time to negotiate with it or escape without a fight.” 

“What goes on in that range?” Renetta asked, standing up from her chair and walking over to where the group had assembled just inside the door.

“Delta waves,” Koltak responded plainly. “Those frequencies are generated by the brain during sleep, and studies have shown that hearing them can induce a similarly calm state in listeners.”

“We have no way of knowing it will work,” Jeremy said, the edge gone from his tone.

“Based on what we’ve observed, I can say with reasonable confidence that it won’t make the situation worse.” Koltak flexed the colorful ridges of cartilage around their scalp, feeling the beginning of a tension headache setting in. They rubbed their temples and grunted quietly. “It’s uncharted territory, but we either take a risk or we let the captain’s order go through and watch this starship and her crew slaughter a living being.”

Jeremy locked eyes with Koltak. “Are you willing to risk your life on this?”

“I am.”

“And are you willing to risk the rest of the crew’s lives on it?”

Koltak listened to the murmuring out in the atrium and looked around the room at the silent faces of their crew members. Determination. Fear. Worry. Resolution. They could run and hide as they’d done so many times before or they could take a stand for once and act on what they believed was right. It was by no means an easy question to answer, but there seemed to be no other option.

“I am.”


	22. Chapter 22

“Come on, it’s not much further now,” Thriss called down the Jefferies tube to the others. 

“I feel like these access tubes were built for people half my size,” Jeremy grumbled, uncomfortably squeezing his way through the hatchway and out into the slightly wider lateral tube that would take them to the deflector maintenance area.

“Respectfully, Lieutenant, I do not believe you are in a position to complain,” Koltak managed, hefting their eight-foot frame through after him.

Thriss suppressed a laugh and continued down the tube, leading them onward. The plan they’d put together in the science labs was relatively straightforward, given the scope and scale of what they were about to attempt. It would take two teams of two, working in tandem to reprogram the deflector array and modify its supporting particle generator. The latter task was the simpler one by far, but it required an engineer’s hands-on experience, so she would have to handle that one with the help of Lieutenant Caldwell, while Koltak and Ensign Benson reprogrammed the deflector array to emit the delta waves that would calm the entity and save the ship without violating everything Starfleet stood for. 

“You two know what you need to do, right?” Thriss asked the pair in the back.

“You have given us the instructions five times since we left the labs, Ensign,” Koltak replied. “If we fail, it will not be from a lack of information.”

This time, Thriss let out a laugh. “Alright, alright, I guess I’m just letting the nerves get to me,” she said. “We’re coming up on the junction now. Let’s give these a try to make sure they’re working.”

At the next intersection, they stopped and gathered in a circle, with only Renetta small enough to look comfortable where she was sitting. Thriss opened up the toolkit she’d retrieved on the way through the Jefferies tube network and pulled out two small rectangular devices. Passing one to Renetta, she opened the panel on hers and powered it on. Setting the dial to the right channel, she pressed the input and heard a corresponding chirp come from the device in Renetta’s hands.

“I still don’t understand where you found this ancient tech,” Jeremy said with a questioning look. “These old communicators haven’t been in use in nearly a hundred years.”

“Chief Naazt has us work with all kinds of outdated tech in our spare time,” Thriss replied. “He says it’ll help us understand what we’re working with now, and how we got here. I have to admit, we couldn’t have been luckier to have these now, with all of the comms down. The reason Starfleet used these communicators in the old days was because of how robust they were. For all the benefits of our combadges, they do have a major drawback when we lose the shipwide network and don’t have any nearby Federation satellites or relay stations for backup.”

“So this is where we split up?” Renetta asked, still examining her communicator.

Jeremy nodded. “We won’t be far. Just give us a shout if you need anything. And good luck, we’re all counting on you.”


	23. Chapter 23

A few minutes later, with Renetta and Koltak at the deflector control station, Thriss and Jeremy reached the particle generator that Naazt and his team had reconfigured to supply the deflector array with enough polaron particles to tunnel their way through the energy cloud and reach safety. _Not an energy cloud,_ she reminded herself. _A living being. That’s why we’re here, risking our careers and lives to stop them._

“Ok, we’re here. What do you need from me?” Jeremy asked. 

“Honestly, I just need another pair of hands,” she said. “The others aren’t going to have the time to reprogram the deflector completely, so they’re just overlaying the delta wave pattern over the existing polaron burst. We need to disconnect this generator completely, which is going to take some muscle. I’ll tell you where to go and what to do if that’s alright with you.”

“You’re the boss. Just point me where you want me to go.” He settled his back against the curved wall and did his best to stay out of her way until she told him what to do next.

They worked in relative silence for the next few minutes, redirecting the particle flow chambers and closing off the connection to the deflector. Thriss called out instructions for each modification, and the two worked in parallel to avoid triggering the safeties that would lock them out if any tampering was detected. 

“We’re almost there,” she said, closing off one of the final valves that would allow the generator to be safely put in standby mode and separated from the deflector array. “Just one more to go.”

Jeremy moved around the equipment to join her. The sensation of movement from somewhere far behind him gave her just enough time to react. With all of her strength, she threw him to the ground as a thin line of phaser fire shot by where he’d been standing.

“I should have known you’d try something like this, Thriss,” Johnson said as he stepped out from behind another large piece of equipment. He held the phaser at the ready, looking back and forth between Thriss and Jeremy. “I know you’re upset about this, but I can’t let you get us all killed just because you’re concerned about what might happen to some cloud of energy you think is alive.”

“So what, you shoot at a fellow officer?” Jeremy blurted out in exasperation. “How the hell does that make any sense?”

“When that officer is in the process of sabotaging the ship in an effort to prevent us from following the Captain’s orders and save ourselves from catastrophe? I may only be an engineer, Lieutenant, but I think any of our security staff would have done the same. It’s a phaser on stun, not a disruptor pistol.”

Thriss stood angrily, all but ignoring the phaser trained on her. “Jack, it’s really alive! The science team made contact with it! If you put that phaser down, you can help us!”

“Thriss, it’s too late for that. There’s only one thing we know will work, and we’re out of time. The whole ship is coming apart around us. Now sit down and wait. I don’t want to stun you, but I will if I have to.”

The blood pumping through her was now a heavy drumbeat against her head, pushing away her caution and patience. When her communicator, still resting on her toolkit nearby, chirped, and Johnson turned toward it, she charged into action. She watched as the phaser came swinging back toward her, but it was too late for either of them to change course. Two knuckles popped as her clenched blue fist made contact with Jack’s nose, followed by a crunch of bone and a spray of red human blood. The phaser went off, but went wide, grazing her shoulder with searing pain, but leaving her conscious. The same could not be said for the Lieutenant, whose head bounced against the floor as he collapsed from the impact of her heavy punch.

Her whole body shook with adrenaline, and she willed herself to something resembling control even as her instincts urged her to attack again. She took a breath and looked back at Jeremy, whose expression was somewhere between shock and admiration.

“We’re almost out of time,” she said. “I can’t move this arm, so I’ll need you to shut off the last valve.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, taking one last moment to process the scene before moving across the room and making the last few modifications. Once he’d closed the valve, he made his way over to where she stood, carefully stepping around the fallen officer at her feet. “Is that it then?”

“It should be,” she said. She picked up the communicator and flipped it open. “Sorry for the wait, we got interrupted. How are you two doing?”

“The deflector has been reprogrammed,” came Koltak’s voice. “Let’s hope that it is not too late.”

As if prompted by Koltak’s thoughts, the entire deck began to hum as the deflector array came online. Thriss shared a look with Jeremy. “More like right on time. Now we get to find out if we’ve just saved a life, or doomed hundreds.”


	24. Chapter 24

The large saucer section of _Babel_ loomed overhead as Raj looked out the forward observation window on Deck Twenty-Four, where he’d been stuck since the turbolifts went out. Beside him stood his Chief Engineer, arms crossed with irritation at the lack of work left to do.

“The deflector is online on auxiliary power and warming up to fire now, Captain. Any second now we should see the polaron burst fire and clear the cloud from around the ship.”

 _Yes, but was it the right thing to do?_

Raj watched as the deflector above them began to light up, and the knot in his stomach tightened further. _What I did, I did to protect my crew. I hope that some of them can find it in themselves to forgive me for it._

The ship began to hum, and Raj braced himself for the eruption of particles that would rip through the cloud of energy and free them from its hold. As he waited and waited, his anxiety turned to confusion, and he tore his eyes from the window to look at Naazt, whose thick Tellarite brow was furrowed in confusion as well.

“Chief, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know. But whatever the deflector is doing, it’s not firing a polaron burst.”

The hum from the deflector increased, but it wasn’t a violent noise. If anything, it felt soothing. Raj and Naazt both leaned in toward the window, searching for some explanation of what their ship was doing. 

“Look, Captain! The cloud!” 

Raj followed Naazt’s outstretched hand away from the deflector, and his jaw dropped. The cloud, which had pressed in so tight against the ship that the front of the saucer was mostly obscured from their window, was retreating. The lights flickered on abruptly, followed by the rest of the ship-wide systems. Both of their combadges chirped immediately.

_“Bridge to Captain Murali and Lieutenant Naazt. The cloud is dispersing, though we didn’t see any evidence of a polaron emission. What just happened?”_

Raj tapped his combadge to respond. “We’re not sure either, Commander. But I can promise you this: we’re going to find out.”


	25. Chapter 25

“What do you think is going to happen?” Renetta fiddled with the ends of her sleeves as the four saboteurs walked down the hallway toward the turbolift that would carry them to their debriefing. “Discommendation? Demotion? De-”

“I think it would be best if we spent less time speculating and simply did our best to arrive on time so as not to draw any further disapproval,” Koltak said flatly. Their shoulders were slumped and they walked with the posture of someone who dreaded what lie ahead.

Renetta turned to Jeremy and Thriss, who were walking nearer to her, and lowered her voice. “What if they separate us and give us new assignments?”

“Does it matter?” the Andorian asked. “We knew we were disobeying orders when we started. We knew we were doing the right thing. Now, we just need to hope the rest of the staff came to their senses and realized it, too.”

Jeremy shrugged, unusually stoic as they all piled into the turbolift, and tilted his head toward the Andorian as they bumped shoulders. “What Thriss said. We did what we thought was right. Whatever happens now is what we just have to accept as the tradeoff for saving a life.”

The four rose through the decks in silence until the doors whispered open, ushering them onto the bridge. They walked in silence, filing one after the other into the briefing room where the captain and first officer stood waiting at the far end of the long table.

“Please, take a seat,” Raj said with a gesture at the empty chairs in the conference room.

The group split and took seats on either side of the table. Jeremy and Renetta sat with their backs to the windows and Thriss and Koltak occupied the chairs opposite them. Once the crew was settled, Shannon and Raj assumed their seats at the head of the table.

“First,” the captain stated, “I’d like to make clear the sequence of events that led us to where we are now. When _Babel_ encountered the derelict Strux vessel, we found evidence of electrical damage from an outside source. This damage was consistent with the readings we took from what we now know was some form of subspace-based entity that can phase in and out of our space, usually in search of energy. This entity, which we first believed to be some form of spatial anomaly, began to surround the ship and disable or damage ship systems, with increasing severity. Initial tests showed that the entity could be dispersed with a polaron emission, and under the advice of my engineering staff, I ordered modifications to be made to the main deflector array that would allow us to generate a polaron burst large enough to tunnel our way out of the anomaly. When I announced this plan, a group of crew members who had been studying it objected, under the notion that it was in fact a living being. Am I correct so far?”

“Yes sir,” the group replied in unison.

“After that order was given, you all continued to research the anomaly, in an effort to make contact with it. While you were eventually successful, it was only after the anomaly had disabled the internal comms system as well as the turbolift network, preventing you from relaying this information to your commanding officers. You took it upon yourselves to sabotage the modifications our engineering team had made, assault a fellow officer, and risk the lives of this ship and her crew in order to prevent the death of this newly discovered alien lifeform. You did this in direct violation of the orders you had been given, without proof that your plan would be successful. Have I been accurate so far?”

“Yes sir,” they replied again, this time far more somberly.

“I want you to understand this before we go any further. Starfleet follows a chain of command for a reason. When crew members put their personal feelings and opinions above their orders, it can put not just those crew members, but the entire ship and thousands or millions of others affected by that ship’s mission in danger. If what you tried today had failed, you would have caused the deaths of six hundred people. I want to know, from each of you, exactly what you thought you were doing today.”

The room was achingly silent for several heartbeats as everyone at the table held their tongues, unwilling to be the first to speak. Jeremy was the first to budge, sighing as he turned his shoulders square to the head of the table and made eye contact with both the captain and the first officer.

“We thought we were doing the right thing, sir.” His tone was official. There was no trace of his usual levity or playfulness, only business and procedure. “I believe I speak for all of us here when I say that. Speaking only for myself, however, I was putting my trust in my fellow officers, who had given me compelling evidence and shown me firsthand that what we were dealing with was not only a new lifeform, but a being that acted only out of fear, not out of malice. Admittedly, I took a backseat in the discovery of the entity and the determination of its intentions, but I did play a direct role in the sabotage of the deflector array. I understood fully the repercussions of our failure, and I knew that I was willfully acting against your direct orders. I assume full responsibility for my actions, sir, but I stand by what I did, and I do believe that I made the right choice.”

The captain nodded slowly and turned to the rest of them. “Does anyone else have anything they wish to add?”

“I was responsible for the initial investigation into the lifeform, Captain,” Koltak inserted, after a pause. “I had been performing comparative brainwave analyses with a few other science officers when the neuro monitors began picking up interference. When I presented my data to you at our last briefing session, there was insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion as to the energy being’s sentience or involvement in producing those readings. Following the briefing, I and a few other individuals continued to study the patterns and known channels of communication for the being, which eventually resulted in sustained, controlled contact between ourselves and it.” They paused, seeming to debate how much of the next part of the story they wished to share. “Immediately succeeding our contact, the ship’s communications went down and power failed. Although it is impossible to say for certain, I believe this was in response to learning of your plan to use polaron tunneling to extract the ship from within the heart of the being.” They shifted uncomfortably in their seat and adjusted the bottom of their blue and black uniform shirt. “I was the one who ultimately decided to risk the lives of all six-hundred individuals on board this ship, Captain.” Koltak paused and looked up, waiting for the captain to say something. When it was clear there was nothing to be said before their explanation was complete, the Gliesian continued. “With the entity showing signs of distress and aggression, presumably as a result of fear, I staked my life and the survival of this ship on the… the _belief_ ,” they emphasized the word with heavy regret, “that a broadcast on the frequency of delta waves would soothe the being, as they have been shown to soothe other lifeforms with brain functions similar to ours. It was an irresponsible gamble, captain. If anyone is to blame for what happened, at all stages of the transgression, it is I.”

“Koltak,” Renetta spoke up before anyone else could interject first, “it’s not like you acted alone. I was there when we made first contact. I pushed for us to continue trying to make contact when you were ready to give up. I dragged Jer- Lieutenant Caldwell into this, and I supported every aspect of this plan.” She turned to face Raj and Shannon, placing her shaking hands underneath her legs. “I was impulsive. I often am, honestly. Sometimes, I don’t really know why I’m here and think I’d be better off back on Earth, back at the academy, or stuffed in the shadows of some science lab on a ship or station safely in orbit somewhere, well out of harm’s way. Responsibility terrifies me, but--” She stepped on her own foot, the physical sensation bringing her back to present and stopping the rambling rabbit hole she’d begun to fall down. Taking a deep breath, Renetta started again. “Captain, Commander, Koltak should not be held solely responsible for the insubordinate acts and decisions that led us to where we are now. I played a significant role in the ongoing research, initial and secondary contacts, and subsequent deflector sabotage. I understand the gravity of the situation, what was at stake, and just how fortunate we all are that our plan succeeded. As terrified as I am of what’s going to happen as a result of my actions,” she took a deep breath, digging her nails into the seat of the chair beneath her legs, “I also stand by what we did, sir, because I do believe it was the right decision, even though it meant directly disobeying you.”

After the three scientists had spoken, the captain turned to face Thriss. “And you, Ensign?”

Thriss paused for a moment before answering. “Captain, I’m an engineer, not a scientist, so I don’t like to say more than I have to. Starfleet is dedicated to seeking out new life, not killing it. Once I knew it was alive, helping them was the only acceptable option.”

The captain shared a look with Commander O’Malley. “Your thoughts, Commander?”

“Well, Captain, they’ve certainly owned up to their crimes, but I don’t think I’ve heard anything that’s changed my mind.”

Raj nodded. “Agreed.” He turned back to face the four saboteurs. “Lieutenant Caldwell, Ensigns Thriss and Benson, Crewman Rygelix, what you did today was a serious gamble with the lives of everyone on board, and I take violations of the chain of command very seriously. That being said, today you both discovered and prevented the death of a new lifeform. Perhaps more importantly, you prevented a Federation starship from killing an innocent being. You acted with conviction and integrity and followed the Starfleet mandate with your every action. Anyone can follow an order, but it takes great courage to disobey one for the right reasons and take responsibility for it as well. The type of quick thinking and ethical decision-making that you all displayed today was exactly what I expect from my officers, and I want to offer you my personal gratitude for saving me from the consequences of the decision I made in desperation.”

Renetta glanced around the room, relief rushing to her head and making her feel slightly dizzy.

“Thank you, sir,” Jeremy said first, followed by chorusing thank yous from Thriss and Koltak.

“Thank you, Captain,” Renetta said a moment later, meeting the eyes of both the captain and his First Officer. She was about to say something else when everyone began to rise. Following suit, everyone was spared another babbling spiel as the captain dismissed the group and they filed out of the room as they had entered, one after the other.


	26. Chapter 26

Jeremy let out a quiet sigh of relief as the group of lucky rebels filed out onto the bridge. By all accounts, they should have received a round of discommendations at the least and a dishonorable discharge at worst. Instead, they walked away with barely a slap on the wrist and full praises for saving the captain, the ship, and the energy being from a hasty order made in the heat of the moment.

They had filed out of the room in reverse order, giving him the opportunity to quietly observe his peers without them knowing. By the looks of the gradually-relaxing postures, he wasn’t the only one coping with the surprise on a delay. Renetta walked ahead of him, her curly hair practically vibrating with the tension she was struggling to contain. Jeremy took a couple of longer strides up to walk beside her and gave her a gentle squeeze on the shoulder before dropping his hand back to his side.

“You can breathe now, Ensign,” he said quietly so as not to draw the attention of the others. “No demotion, no reassignment, no need to worry. The ship is safe and we’re still in our commanding officers’ good graces.”

Her eyes glistened as if she’d been holding back tears. “I’m just so glad it all worked out.”

“Me too,” he said. “I’ll see you next shift, alright?”

Renetta nodded and Jeremy strode off, sharing a relieved smile with Thriss as he passed her. He stopped next to Koltak, barely making it to the alien’s shoulder as the group approached the turbolifts.

“Crewman, can I talk to you for a moment?”

Koltak turned and looked down. “Of course.”

“Why don’t we go to Ten Forward and get something to drink while we do, if you have the time?”

“Of course.”

The two separated from the rest of the group and took the other turbolift down from the bridge.

“Have I done something wrong?” Koltak asked as they stood in the humming tube as it traveled down to the tenth deck.

“What?” The question took Jeremy by surprise. “No, no. I just wanted to talk to you about something. It’s about your service record.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it. I just--” He sighed as the doors opened and the two of them stepped out onto Deck Ten. “I have a suggestion I’d like to make, but I need you to stop acting like this is going to be another lecture. You’re not in trouble, and unless you decide to throw your drink on me, I am not and will not be mad at you.”

Koltak bowed their head and Jeremy swore that for a fraction of a second he saw them smile. “Alright. I apologize. Let’s try again.” They walked over to a table near the door, tucked away in an alcove. “My service record.”

“Yeah, I’ve been looking over it and I was wondering why you never pursued an officer’s commission. Your file says you attended the Academy but dropped out half a year before your graduation. Other than a few classes, you have all the qualifications you’d need, yet you’re an NCO. Why?”

“It… didn’t seem necessary at the time. I didn’t need a commission to be a crewman aboard a starship.”

“You know, you’re a terrible liar.” A server stopped by the table and took their orders briefly. “Why did you really decide not to finish your training? I can’t imagine you _wanted_ the smaller bunks.”

Koltak paused and glanced around the room, pointedly avoiding eye contact with Jeremy.

“Well?” he prodded.

“I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“Clearly, but why?”

Their attention snapped back to Jeremy, a sudden intensity in their eyes. Koltak leaned in and lowered their voice. “Do you know anything about Gliese and its people? We’re murderers. A militant race of savage, trained combatants. From a young age, we’re conscripted to fight in the global war, and we know no peace. Not for centuries.” They leaned back and resumed a conversational tone. “A military is a military, no matter how you try to sell it. I came here to study, not to fight.”

“And you did what so many of us were too afraid to do today. You saved a life. It had nothing to do with your title or mine, designation or association. You did that because you knew it was right and you fought for it.”

The server reappeared with their orders: A swirled glass of orange liquid for Jeremy and a bowl of rich brown soup for Koltak. They picked up the bowl and began to slowly drink the broth.

“Hear me out, Crewman. I understand where you’re coming from in your opinions. Earth had a rough history and many times of war, each one worse than the next, but we eventually figured it out. Those ancient militaries did awful and unspeakable things, but what we are now is military more in title than anything else. We’re an organized legion of minds and scientists. Our chain of command exists to maintain some order, and the reason so many of us join as commissioned officers is so that someday, we might be able to lead others to do great things.”

Koltak set down the bowl and wiped the traces of broth from their mouth. “I don’t understand what all of this has to do with my position as a non-commissioned officer.”

Jeremy held up a placating finger. “Hang on, I’m getting to that.” He took a sip of his beverage and continued. “I see incredible potential in you, Koltak. You’re intelligent, intuitive, and you think differently from the rest of us here. If given the opportunity, you could do incredible things and teach people to think outside the box. You’re about three classes away from an officer’s commission. I think you should pursue it.”

“I don’t see why people would want to listen to me. The captain clearly didn’t.”

“The captain was acting on fear earlier. Just now, he thanked you. Had it not been for your perseverance, the energy being we encountered -- that new species unlike any other -- would be gone. You’ve got something I don’t think anyone else on this ship does. You have a respect for life in all its forms, and you have a more level head than anyone I’ve ever met. You could stay where you are and continue to take orders and take risks by going against those orders, or you could sit through a few more classes, get your commission, and have the opportunity to someday lead the Federation to bigger and better things.”

Koltak was quiet for a time as they stared into their bowl, watching the gentle ripples on the surface as the ship hummed around them. “I suppose I can consider it.”

Jeremy smiled. “That’s all I ask.”


	27. Chapter 27

The turbolift doors opened on Deck Two, and David walked nervously down the hallway. It wasn’t as if this was their first dinner date, but even remembering the look in Renetta’s eyes when she’d invited him over to her quarters set his heart racing. Unfortunately, it also made him anxious, sweaty, and generally paranoid about his every action. 

He finally reached room forty-seven and hesitated at the door panel. He checked each and every flower petal in the Risian bouquet he’d replicated to make sure he hadn’t mangled them on the walk over. He let out a deep breath, then another, until eventually, he could think straight. Not giving himself another chance to panic, he pressed a button on the panel and the door chime sounded.

“Come on in!” she called from inside, and the doors slid open, inviting him in further.

He stepped out of the bright lights of the hallway and into the low, intimate lighting of her quarters. A bottle of red wine was set out on the table, along with a couple of glasses and place settings for two. David looked around the otherwise empty room, soft piano music surrounding him in a gentle embrace. Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and he turned to face the doorway to the bedroom just as Renetta was stepping out into the main living space.

She was dressed in a dark red dress that clung to her figure in a most flattering way. The low, sweeping neckline of her dress accented a small gold necklace with a brilliant blue gem set in a delicate pendant. Her hair was down, the wild black curls tamed to the best of her ability cascading gently to her shoulders.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said in a shy voice as she adjusted her dress. When she moved, she seemed to float across the room toward him. “It’s been a crazy day.”

“It was for all of us, but from what I’ve heard, we have you to thank for still being here.” He held out the bouquet and gave her a smile. “I, uh, brought you these.”

“Oh, David, they’re beautiful! Thank you!” She took the flowers from his hand and gave him a massive hug, pausing to give him a quick kiss as she pulled away. “To be honest, though, I feel like I didn’t do much besides stand there and watch.” Renetta replicated a vase and arranged the flowers on her coffee table. “Sure, I gave a little prompting here and there, but the other three were the ones who really deserve the credit. All I really did was make suggestions.”

“And those suggestions led to discoveries, which led to you taking action to save a brand new lifeform we’ve never seen before. Maybe it’s nothing to you, but I think it’s incredible.”

Renetta blushed as she made her way to the table, not hiding her face from him as much as she usually did when she was feeling bashful. “Well, it’s all part of the job, I suppose. I’m just glad the captain didn’t kick me off the ship.” She poured two glasses of wine, bringing them both over to him and offering one. “I was worried I’d never get to see you again. That’d be the worst punishment I could imagine. A warp theorist will always have a job, but I don’t want to be anywhere that’s not here with you. Especially not now. Not tonight.” She lifted up her glass and held it out as she proposed a toast. “But that’s enough about work. Let’s make this night about us, alright?”

“To us, then.” He raised his glass to hers and took a sip of the full-bodied red wine. “This isn’t synthehol. Where’d you find good wine like this out here?”

Renetta swallowed her sip of wine and grinned. “I have my connections…” She let the comment linger in the air for a moment as she walked back to the table and set down the glass. “I’m kidding. I picked it up last time I was back home. It’s a wine my parents always served at family gatherings. I figured I’d keep a bottle or two in case I ever had a reason to entertain other people. I suppose it’s a good thing I thought ahead like that, huh?” She wandered off in the direction of the replicator and prepared to order up their dinners. A moment later, she was headed back to the table with two plates full of delicious-smelling food. She set them down and pulled out a chair to sit down. “Does your family have any traditions? What’s it like growing up in a colony?”

David paused for a moment to take in the sight and smell of the pasta in front of him. “There’s not a lot different on Alpha Delphi compared to other Federation worlds. It was an early colony, so anything from the frontier days is at least three generations back. My family’s pretty normal, I suppose, but they’re pretty much all so focused on their work, we hardly ever get together for any amount of time. My father’s a civilian engineer, working on the spaceport back home, and my mother works for the planetary government. My cousin is a starship designer in Starfleet, I had a grandfather and a grandmother in Starfleet, and from the way everyone talks back home, you’d think that all there was in the galaxy was Starfleet. That’s not to say I don’t like it here or anything, but it’s hard to think about family without ending up back at work. Is it ever like that for you?”

Renetta shook her head as she chewed a forkful of dinner. Washing it down with a sip of wine, she answered. “Not really. My family is Earth-based and enjoys their roots as they’ve always known them. It kind of explains my hobbies, really. Very, uh, old fashioned, I guess. Barbaric by some standards. Both of my parents work in the Athabasca Solar Fields, back home in Alberta. Oddly enough, that’s kind of my family’s thing. Yours is Starfleet, mine is energy.” She rolled her eyes as she took another bite of pasta and swallowed. “Our family gatherings usually end up devolving into arguments about sports and debate about the newest energy tech. I’m pretty sure I knew the ins and outs of how solar cells worked by the time I was old enough to walk.” Renetta laughed. “I guess every family has a subject they can’t leave alone. When I told them I was leaving to join Starfleet, my mother just about disowned me. It had somehow never occurred to her that I might want to do something other than go into the family business.” She took another sip of wine. “How about you? What did your family think when you decided you wanted to be a pilot?”

David nearly choked on his food at her question. He cleared his throat awkwardly and gave her an apologetic look. “Well, that’s sort of a complicated question. They were thrilled when I applied to the Academy, and thrilled again when I was accepted. Then I barely made it through my first year, and I dropped out halfway through my second. They weren’t so thrilled about that.”

Renetta furrowed her brows in concern and confusion. “How though? You’re brilliant.”

He felt his face flush at the compliment and quickly downed the rest of the wine in his glass. “Thanks, but I’m really not. I mean, I get most of the theory and concepts in class, but I just couldn’t focus. I’d sit through a quantum mechanics lecture or hear a presentation on xenobiology or something and just couldn’t make myself care. It didn’t mean anything to me. I signed up because I wanted to be a pilot. I loved to fly, whether it was a starship like _Babel_ , a shuttlecraft, or even a hovercraft. I wanted so badly to see the stars, but I couldn’t pay attention to what I had to learn to get there. I could ace any practical exam on the flight track, but once I was in a testing room with a PADD in front of me, I was useless. I called in a favor from a friend and got a job flying his uncle’s freighter. I flew for him for a while, but it wasn’t the same feeling.”

“Is that what made you go back to the Academy then?”

David nodded as he took another bite. “I was so mad at myself for leaving in the first place. I thought I’d managed to ruin my whole career. When I called, I found out my advisor had marked my drop-out as a ‘leave of absence’, and even got me credit for my flight hours during the time I’d been gone. If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t be here today.”

“Wow, lucky break.” She realized how her comment sounded and quickly jumped to correct herself. “I mean, if it wasn’t for that, you might never have ended up here and then we’d have never met and… Well, I’m just glad it all worked out. It’d be a lot lonelier here without you.” She blushed again and took another sip of wine before picking up their empty plates and carrying them back to the replicator to be recycled. As she made her way back toward the table, she gestured to the sofa. “Shall we move to the couch?” she asked, picking up her wine.

David retrieved his own glass and followed her across the room to the couch, taking a seat next to her. He held onto his glass, swirling the deep red liquid and staring down at it as he thought of something to say. The alcohol was making everything so wonderfully warm. It was an unfamiliar feeling, but enjoyable nonetheless. He brought his gaze up to meet Renetta’s, her brown eyes studying him expectantly. He felt his cheeks grow warm and he cleared his throat.

“Listen, I, uh,” his eyes drifted down to her necklace, lingering a moment before he snapped his gaze back up to her face, realizing what it probably looked like he was doing. He cleared his throat again. “I’ve really been looking forward to this date and, to be honest, it’s been kind of hard to focus. On work, I mean. Even now, it’s had to focus. I just… I have so much I want to say, but none of it really seems that important all of a sudden.” He paused. She was smiling. It was a cute smile: A little sideways, one dimple, always looking like it was holding back a tiny laugh. He moved closer and set his glass down on the table before putting an arm around her shoulders. “I think I forgot to say this earlier, but you look amazing.”

“You clean up pretty well yourself, you know,” she said, setting her own glass down on the low table and leaning into his embrace. “Even with everything that happened today, in the back of my mind, I wanted nothing more than to be here with you.” Renetta giggled. “It actually came in handy a few times while we were doing some tests in the lab. I had to think about things that made me happy, and I had to think about someone I loved.” She nuzzled his shoulder as she tried to hide the rosiness spreading over her cheeks. “It felt kind of weird thinking about those things in public though. I mean, it sounds stupid, but I had this weird worry that someone might see into my thoughts.”

“Why would that be so bad?” He asked, though David was pretty sure he knew the answer. Part of him just wanted to hear it from her instead of the echo chamber that was his mind.

Renetta sat up and moved in closer still, reaching out and taking hold of the hand in his lap. “Let’s just say they weren’t work-appropriate thoughts.” She smiled shyly and leaned in to kiss him. David smiled beneath her lips and pulled her in close, leaning into the kiss and hoping that his actions would express to her all the things that his words could not.

**The adventures of the _USS Babel_ will continue...**


End file.
